People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals last month filed suit against Louisiana State University, alleging that LSU failed to respond to PETA’s repeated public record requests for information about bird experiments carried out by a faculty member.
The lawsuit was filed Dec. 15 in the 19th Judicial District Court for the Parish of East Baton Rouge and its president, Thomas Galligan. PETA tried unsuccessfully on seven occasions to obtain records about LSU assistant professor Christine Lattin’s experiments involving sparrows, according to the complaint.
“LSU’s lawyers and our lawyers are talking, and a statutory hearing is scheduled for Jan. 28,” Kathy Guillermo, the PETA senior vice president, told the Louisiana Record in an email. “We look forward to the hearing because LSU has been working hard for a year to keep us from finding out more details of how Christine Lattin has tormented and killed birds.”
PETA said it obtained documents which show that the university was involved in the capture, caging and death of scores of sparrows – in possible violation of Baton Rouge ordinance that was in place through the first quarter of 2020. That ordinance banned the trapping, hunting or molesting of birds, according to PETA.
“We also want to know if Lattin violated a Baton Rouge bird-protection ordinance before it was gutted in March, as evidence suggests,” Guillermo said.
LSU did not respond to a request for comment, but the LSU website says that Lattin’s research is aimed at understanding how hormone and neurotransmitter pathways operate in humans and animals alike.
“The focus of my research is to understand how different neurotransmitters and hormones help animals successfully choose mates, raise young, escape from predators, and survive harsh winters and other challenging conditions,” Lattin’s faculty page says.
The Baton Rouge bird-protection ordinance was changed in March to permit “capturing, tormenting and killing” birds such as sparrows for experimentation, according to PETA, which has been pursuing records on the LSU experiments since May 2019.
The lawsuit seeks an injunction to enforce the Louisiana Public Records Act to secure more information and to prevent what PETA describes as future acts of animal cruelty.
“Lattin’s studies have not led to any useful real-world applications, hinge on the deliberate infliction of pain and suffering, and require the death of the birds used,” according to PETA’s allegations.