Your support for PETA’s Animal Test Challenge will be MATCHED, going twice as far to help animals.

Dear clint,

I’ve always been interested in animals, and I’ve dedicated my career to helping them. But nothing prepared me for the horrors I’ve seen inside animal laboratories.

I’ve seen mice torn apart by cagemates who had been driven insane and made aggressive by the stress of confinement. I’ve visited laboratories where dogs are experimented on, and I’ll never forget the anguished cries of the lonely animals there. I’ve observed primates imprisoned in cramped, almost barren cages, which have no ropes for them to swing on, and given no opportunity to socialise. They’re so desperate for affection that they reach out to passing visitors, hoping for someone – anyone – to stop and notice them.

In the coming months, millions of sensitive animals will be locked up in cages and used in cruel, painful experiments. I’ve seen their misery first hand – and we need to do everything we can to end it.

Today, you have a great opportunity to help. Please donate to “Cut It Out” – PETA’s Animal Test Challenge to support our critical work to end experiments on animals. Your generous gift will be matched, up to our £250,000 campaign goal, and will have twice the impact for animals.

Before coming to PETA, I worked in an animal laboratory, where my focus was on the welfare of mice. I was tasked with conducting some animal experiments of my own and, often, with dissecting the corpses of the very mice I’d spent weeks observing. Wool would be soaked in fluoroethane and placed in a plastic tub. The mice would then be forced inside, and a colleague would close the lid. As the seconds dragged on, I could hear them scrambling around – and when we finally opened the tub, I’d see that the dead mice were soaked in their own urine and faeces. Those images will forever haunt me.

Later, when I became a lecturer on animal behaviour and welfare, I’d often take my students to a nearby laboratory. Even though I would warn them about what they’d see inside, most would still come out shaken and crying.

I spent years believing that I could somehow improve animals’ lives in their laboratory prisons – but eventually, I realised that the only way to achieve meaningful change for these animals is to get them out of laboratories. That’s when I came to work at PETA and dedicated my life to stopping animal tests.

Please strengthen PETA’s campaigns to get animals out of laboratories by donating right now – during this special challenge, your impact will be DOUBLED.

As PETA’s science policy adviser, I work with government and regulatory agencies to help replace animal tests with non-animal methods. My goal is to promote animal-free testing as not only more ethical but also more cost-effective and beneficial for humans.

Every day, I work to end archaic tests on animals, including cosmetics tests that are still taking place despite a ban in Europe. More and more companies are appealing regulatory decisions that require animal tests because they understand just how archaic and unreliable those tests are. The PETA International Science Consortium (of which PETA is a member) is supporting these efforts and also promoting and funding the development of cutting-edge technology, such as in vitro methods that use human cells and tissues, to replace the use of animals in experiments.

I’m encouraged by the tremendous progress we’re making, but we need funds and resources to keep this vital work moving forward. Will you please make a generous donation right now to help end animal suffering in laboratories?

Your gift today will bring us closer to a day when no animal is tormented and killed in a laboratory.

Thank you for your compassion.

Sincerely,

Dr Julia Baines
Science Policy Adviser
PETA