Photos: PETA Protests Uni’s Forced Swim Experiments With Bridge Banner Drop

Photos: PETA Protests Uni’s Forced Swim Experiments With Bridge Banner Drop

Bristol – Today, ahead of the University of Bristol’s 2022 Open Day, PETA activists dropped a giant banner – reading “Uni of Bristol: Stop Torturing Animals! Ban the Forced Swim Test” – over the M32 footbridge (between Gatton Road and Waverley Street) to call for the university to take a stand against the forced swim test and ban it on campus.

High-resolution images are available here.

In these controversial and flawed experiments, small animals, who may or may not have been dosed with a test substance, are dropped into inescapable beakers of water, in which they paddle frantically in search of an escape, desperate to keep their head above water. Eventually, the animals may float. They’re then removed from the beaker and later killed. The test is erroneously assumed to shed light on mental health conditions in humans. PETA is urging the university to embrace superior, non-animal research instead.

“Aspiring University of Bristol students should know that rodents are tormented in these cruel and worthless tests,” says PETA UK Senior Campaigns Manager Kate Werner. “As opposition to forced swim experiments continues to grow, PETA is calling on the University of Bristol to adopt modern research methods that leave animals in peace and commit to never using the forced swim test.”

Following discussions with PETA entities, 15 companies and several universities, including King’s College London, have declared that they don’t intend to use the forced swim test, which some previously used for depression research, in the future.

PETA UK – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Contact:

Jennifer White +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]

#