Staged Mice Fights: Alliance for Animals and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals File Complaint Over Crimes Against Animals
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

 Alliance For Animals

[Ed. Note: From UW vivisector Stephen C. Gammie's website (so you can "understand" the logic of mice fights as a way to "help human beings..." Really???): "We have two novel lines of mice in our lab. One line has very high levels of maternal aggression and we derived this line from outbred mice using an artificial selection approach. We use this line for many of our offspring protection studies. A second line of mice also has high maternal defense, but was originally a mouse line selected for high wheel running. We identified high maternal aggression in this line and while maintaining it in our lab realized that high rates of naturally occurring maternal neglect appeared each generation. This line of mice also exhibits traits that are consistent with mania. Thus, we are interested in using these mice to examine the neural basis of mania and maternal neglect."]

AFA and PETA filed a complaint with the Dane County District Attorney’s office on June 9, 2011, documenting over a decade of violations of Wisconsin’s Crimes Against Animals stemming from research involving staged animal fights in the Stephen C. Gammie and the Catherine A. Marler labs.

The Wisconsin statute is easy to understand:

951.08 Instigating fights between animals. (1) No person may intentionally instigate, promote, aid or abet as a principal, agent or employee, or participate in the earnings from, or intentionally maintain or allow any place to be used for a cockfight, dog fight, bullfight or other fight between the same or different kinds of animals or between an animal and a person. This section does not prohibit events or exhibitions commonly featured at rodeos or bloodless bullfights.

951.08 (2) No person may own, possess, keep or train any animal with the intent that the animal be engaged in an exhibition of fighting.

951.08 (3) No person may intentionally be a spectator at a cockfight, dog fight, bullfight or other fight between the same or different kinds of animals or between an animal and a person.

951.18 Penalties. 951.18 (2) Any person who violates s. 951.08 (2m) or (3) is guilty of a Class A misdemeanor. Any person who violates s. 951.08 (1) or (2) is guilty of a Class I felony for the first violation and is guilty of a Class H felony for the 2nd or subsequent violation.

Fights between mice have been instigated at the UW-Madison for over a decade. Mice have been kept for this purpose. Mice have been trained through multiple fights with other mice known to be winners or losers. Researchers have earned money from instigating the fights and have paid others in their labs from those earnings. Other university staff and probably students have been spectators at the fights.

Fights between mice are not genteel affairs. Wounding and even death are common results. A BBC video of a fight between mice is available here.

Coming on the heels of the university’s legal problems surrounding the illegal sheep decompression deaths, this new complaint makes clear that the university has a long history of disdain for or ignorance of Wisconsin State laws against cruelty to animals.

The university has now slipped a measure into the state budget bill by way of the University System Omnibus Motion. Item 27:

Liability Protections for Scientific Researchers: Specify that current law provisions prohibiting crimes against animals would not apply to persons engaged in bona fide scientific research at an educational or research institution or persons who are authorized or otherwise regulated under federal law to utilize animals for these purposes.

In short, the University does not want to follow Wisconsin's Crimes Against Animals laws.

What you can (MUST) do IF YOU ARE A WISCONSIN VOTER...

Contact your state legislators today. Ask them to request a formal Report on Item 27 of the University System Omnibus Motion passed in the Joint Finance Committee as part of the state budget bill.

Don't know your legislators? Click here. It's easy.

Tell them that the language of item 27 is confusing. Are all persons engaged in research at the university exempt from all the state’s anti-cruelty laws all the time wherever they are? Will the university be able to stage dog fights if item 27 becomes law? Tell them that the state has an obligation to regulate the use of animals and protect them from cruelty, especially at the state university.

Since apparently most humans don't already know that ALL mothers protect their children, here's more from Gammie's website to validate his cruelty to animals and his misuse of money that could be spent on actually healing human beings:

My research focuses on understanding the neural circuitry that underlies different maternal behaviors in mice. In a wide range of mammals, including primates, bears, cats, dogs and mice, mothers are highly protective when their offspring are young and vulnerable. As part of this protective behavior, lactating females will attack a threat against their offspring in a behavior termed maternal aggression or maternal defense. Although offspring protection plays a critical role in the perpetuation of species and offspring, it has received relatively little research attention. The present focus of my lab work is understanding the genetic and neural basis of maternal aggression. Our current work is focused, in part, on the role of lateral septum in regulating maternal aggression and on how the neuromodulators, norepinephrine, GABA, and neurotensin, regulate offspring protection. I am also interested in examining the neuroendocrine basis of other maternal behaviors. Researchers in my lab will be given the opportunity to participate in on-going studies and/or initiate independent projects.

The general approach in the laboratory is to use multiple levels of analysis to gain insights into how neural circuitry controls behavior. The techniques used in the lab include behavioral testing, immunohistochemistry, direct testing of neuromodulators on behavior (via cannula implanted in the CNS), pharmacological techniques, anatomical techniques, Western blotting, and analysis of gene expression in subregions of the brain using gene arrays and real-time PCR. Studies are conducted on mice, including knockout mice.


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