Urge UGC to Cut Out Dissection

Urge UGC to Cut Out Dissection

Following pressure from PETA India, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has formed a committee of university and government officials to consider the practice of using animal dissection to teach science courses.

Despite the availability of modern and superior non-animal teaching methods, millions of sentient animals – including frogs, worms, cats and dogs – are taken from the wild or purposely bred each year to be killed in crude classroom exercises. Inspections of breeding facilities have found sick animals kept in cramped, filthy cages without sufficient food, water, light or veterinary care. Animals are often handled by untrained staff, and undercover investigators have documented that rats are sometimes embalmed while still alive and that frogs are killed by being slammed headfirst onto a hard surface.

In many experiments, live insects or frogs are pinned down and cut up; other animals are improperly euthanised.

We are asking the UGC committee to support a ban on animal dissection and to contact all universities across India to request that they restructure their zoology, anatomy and other life-sciences curricula to replace animal dissections with modern, non-animal teaching methods.

We Need Your Help!

Please write to members of the UGC committee and urge them to cut dissection from college curricula.

Subject

I was dismayed to learn that animals are still being used for dissection in old-fashioned and cruel classroom exercises in universities across India despite the availability of modern and superior non-animal teaching methods.

In recent years, experts have evaluated the educational value and morality of cutting up animals just to "see how they work". Science is the study of life and should therefore teach respect for life - a lesson that cannot be learned when treating living beings as disposable objects and killing them. By using modern, humane teaching methods, instructors can teach both science and ethics simultaneously.

Compassionate students want to study science without dissecting animals. Sophisticated computer simulations, videodiscs and models have been developed to meet these needs. All studies of this issue show that students who use non-animal teaching methods perform at least as well - and usually better than - students who dissect, while saving money and encouraging respect for all beings.

Please support an immediate ban on animal dissection and write to all the universities across India and give clear and binding instructions about the need to restructure their zoology and life-sciences curricula to replace cruel and unscientific animal dissections with modern, non-animal teaching methods.

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