A three-day old lamb (not one of those castrated by Tufts)
According to a story reported yesterday by Frederic J. Frommer of The Associated Press, The Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University in Grafton, MA was cited by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for "withholding anesthesia from piglets and lambs during procedures without adequate scientific justification for doing so."
Frommer reported that Tufts spokesman Tom Keppeler confirmed that the procedure was the castration of piglets and lambs at the school's working farm, and asserted that in the U.S., farm animals "are routinely castrated without anesthesia."
OUCH!
The USDA report was uncovered by Stop Animal Exploitation NOW, an animal rights group based in Milford, Ohio.
Even though Tufts' appeal of the USDA citation was denied, Frommer reports that the veterinary school is still castrating pigs and lambs without anesthesia, but these procedures are no longer being conducted by students.
It should be noted that a 2002 study conducted by David S. Hodgson, DVM, of the Department of Clinical Sciences at Kansas State University demonstrated the safety, ease, speed, and cost-effectiveness of using liquid isoflorane as an anesthesia agent for piglet castration. With this in mind, it is unconscionable that Tufts is apparently continuing to employ needlessly painful and inhumane methods to manage the farm animals in its care.
For more info: Read more about the USDA's guidelines for the humane management and treatment of farm animals at the Animal Welfare Information Center.
Comments
The unimaginable, depraved cruelty inflicted upon ANY animal in the legalized animal abusive institutional research laboratories is a shameful blight on our nation, and the "White Coats" who carry out these tortures are your next door neighbors, protected from arrest for the crime of animal abuse. Disgusting people abuse animals...and the exhalted scientist, teacher, professors and doctors purposely bring suffering and elongated death to helpless creatures, routinely.
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