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PETA admonishes LSU lab

Among the utter devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent failure of the levees surrounding New Orleans was the death of 6,000 to 8,000 research-laboratory animals at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center.

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) believes someone must be held accountable for the deaths and, in a letter to the Louisiana District Attorney's Office last week, the organization requested criminal charges be filed against those who abandoned the animals.

"These animals were either on the basement level or on the first-floor level," PETA Research Associate Alka Chandna said. "A simple measure like moving them up one or two flights of stairs [could have saved them]."

Citing lower-budget, non-profit animal-care organizations in the city of New Orleans that saved all of their animals, PETA insists there is some criminal liability to be found.

"Abandonment [of animals] is actually a criminal negligence in the state of Louisiana," Chandna said. "[So] we're asking the Attorney General to pursue charges against the university for abandoning them."

LSU System Vice President Charles Zewe said the animal-care handlers did everything in their power to keep the animals alive and that, as far as he knows, the system has not considered disciplining anyone at any level.

"They did the best they could. They made the best decisions they could," he said. "Nobody wanted the animals to die."

Zewe said the animal-care handlers stayed with the animals at the facility throughout the storm and added that, initially, the animals and the building survived just fine. The real damage came during what Zewe described as "almost like a flash food" after the levees broke.

"When the water started to come up, they were ordered by the authorities to leave the building immediately," Zewe said. "When human beings are being told you have to leave now, no matter what, they don't have the option of saying, 'No, we have to stay because we have all these animals to move.'"

Chandna also expressed a concern that LSU officials voiced greater concern over their lost research and seemed to consider the loss of their animals of secondary importance, citing one Associated Press article in particular.

"We find it outrageous that the several places in the article where the researchers have an opportunity to reflect on the deaths of 8,000 animals through suffocation, dehydration, starvation and drowning, the singular comment seems to be a lament over lost data," Chandna said in an e-mail to The Badger Herald.

Zewe insisted LSU does "not at all" consider the deaths of the animals of secondary importance to the destruction of research projects and data, but did note "the loss of research has a real human consequence."

"A lot of researchers had [dedicated] a lot of years to doing research for human beings," he said.

The Louisiana Attorney General's Office did not return a call seeking comment.

PETA also sent letters to the United States Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and the chancellor of LSU-Baton Rouge, the system's flagship institution, all relating to the enormous loss of animal life in New Orleans.