Pune: ‘Mouse,’ ‘Rabbit,’ ‘Monkey,’ and ‘Dog’ to Plead to be Spared Cruel Animal Tests During World Week for Animals in Laboratories

For Immediate Release:

24 April 2025

Contact:

Hiraj Laljani; [email protected]

Atharva Deshmukh; [email protected]

Pune – During the World Week for Animals in Laboratories (this week), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India and Hope for Paws Pune supporters will put on Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) kits and geometric masks depicting a mouse, rabbit, dog, and monkey. They will hold signs reading, “Animals Are Not Ours to Experiment On,” and “Stop Animal Tests,” while greeting passersby in Pune on Friday to urge support for the position that animal experiments must be replaced by modern non-animal means.

When:        Friday, 25 April, 12 noon

Where:       Outside Westside Store, Fergusson College Road, Pune, Maharashtra 411004

“Many people have no idea how sensitive animals are still tortured and killed in laboratories in India and around the world,” says PETA India Campaigns Coordinator Atharva Deshmukh “India is already taking steps to move away from unreliable and unethical tests on animals and we urge more investment in superior, non-animal methods that are better for humans too and the future of science.”

PETA India notes that countless monkeys, dogs, mice, rabbits and other animals are mutilated, burned, blinded, cut open, poisoned, and drugged in laboratories every year. These tests are cruel, and their results are inapplicable to humans because of the vast physiological variation among species. Modern, non-animal research methods are reliable, human-relevant, and more cost-efficient than those involving animals.

India is already moving away from experiments on animals. PETA India’s efforts helped achieve a ban on cruel tests on animals for cosmetics and their ingredients, a ban on the importation of animal-tested cosmetics, and a ban on testing household products on animals in India. the New Drugs and Clinical Trials (Amendment) Rules, 2023 passed by the Government of India encourages the use of modern non-animal methods and technology.

PETA India scientists have developed the groundbreaking Research Modernisation Deal: a road map for strategically optimising India’s investment in research to cure disease and advance human wellbeing by focusing on methods such as advanced in vitro and in silico technologies that outperform animal-based methods.

PETA India – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information about PETA India’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETAIndia.com or follow PETA India on X, Facebook, or Instagram.

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