The NGO People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has organized a protest outside the headquarters of the Hong Kong Technology Venture Company (HKTV) to condemn the technology group’s “horrific experiments over the years in which dozens of animals have been decapitated, dismembered and kept alive for up to seven hours”.
On Friday, four PETA supporters in Asia posed as pigs and sheep, languishing in mock blood, outside HKTVmall’s parent company in Tseung Kwan O. One protester held a placard reading: “HKTVmall: Modernist research. Dump animal experiments.”
HKTV revealed a controversial science project in the last annual REPORT on March 30, saying it had conducted 38 experiments over the past four years in which “limbs or heads of animals were separated from their bodies.”
The tests, part of an ongoing “Life Science Project,” aim to develop devices to maintain the “viability of severed body organs,” according to the firm. HKTV reported that the animal’s limbs remained viable for about 46 hours, while the heads survived for approximately seven hours, which its research team claimed was a world first.
The animal NGO has called for a boycott of HKTVmall. “HKTV’s disturbing decapitation experiments are straight out of a horror movie and must be stopped before another animal endures a horrific and prolonged death,” PETA Asia president Jason Baker said in a press release on Friday.
“Animal experiments largely fail to benefit human health, and PETA is asking everyone to speak out against this cruelty by refusing to buy products from HKTVmall until HKTV stops these experiments.”
HKTV’s annual report said the tests could eventually help with applications related to organ transplants and potentially extending human lifespans. However, the firm admitted that it cannot predict the project’s success rate or financial return.
“No significant progress”
Citing research from 2008 to 2015, PETA’s Baker said last week: “Studies examining spinal cord injury experiments on animals show that decades of such work have not led to significant progress in reviving spinal neurons, due to fundamental differences between species.”
He also noted that several prominent US agencies had moved away from animal testing in recent years, while “human-relevant technologies”, such as non-invasive human imaging, have been developed to improve human health.
In an email response to HKFP on April 1, HKTV said its Life Science Project “did not intend to cause unnecessary harm to animals, with the objective of improving the quality of life for the elderly by contributing to advances in organ preservation, limb transplantation and blood regeneration”.
The company said pigs and sheep were “commonly used” in organ transplant research. Anesthetics were used during the experiments and the procedures were in accordance with “regulations regarding the ethics of laboratory animals (issued) by the Government”, HKTV added.
The research team is led by professionals such as “neurosurgeons, neurologists, veterinarians, university professors, anesthesiologists and research specialists,” the company said, without naming the team members. He said that alternative experimental methods had not worked.
