Washington State University veterinary school changes euthanasia curriculum, citing threats

Public pressure from animal rights groups and threats to the staff of Washington State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine have prompted the school’s leadership to abruptly end long-running surgery lessons that ended with euthanasia.

“The safety of our students, faculty, staff, and animals is our highest priority,” veterinary school Dean Dori Borjesson wrote in a statement announcing the decision. “Given the nature of these threats and similar incidents that have occurred at other research universities, WSU has determined that we cannot safely proceed with the equine component of the surgery course this spring and will not move forward with bringing the eight horses associated with the course to campus.”

The surgeries in question are part of the university’s large animal surgery course, an elective typically taken in a student’s third year. The horses involved were transferred from another study, while the university purchased the goats, according to school documentation.

The horses were part of a USDA breeding herd in Idaho, according to an email with the dean published online by a WSU veterinary student who sparked the controversy.

Nonprofit organizations People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Beagle Freedom Project, as well as social media creator and veterinarian Crystal Heath, through her nonprofit Our Honor, have launched large-scale campaigns calling on people to pressure WSU into sparing the eight horses and around 50 goats by changing curriculum to no longer include “terminal surgeries.”

A webpage created by the California-based Beagle Freedom Project titled “Stop the Killing Lab” called on the public to contact WSU leadership about the issue and listed the contact info of more than a dozen administrators and professors.

A PETA statement called the educational labs “sickening,” “barbaric” and “archaic.”

A post from Heath on Instagram showed a clip from a nearly 20-year-old YouTube series called “Charlie the Unicorn,” where a unicorn stomps up and down on another unicorn.

“Actual footage of Washington State University preparing horses for the 3rd year elective veterinary surgery lab,” the title of Heath’s post reads.

The university said the decision to end the equine portion comes as it was working toward doing away with it starting with the next academic school year, and years after veterinary student Larrea Cottingham, now in her fourth year, first raised concerns about the practice.

Cottingham said the conversation was intended to be a professional discussion of best practices. She did not expect the online fervor and “emotional outrage” to take center stage.

“What gets people riled up is the animals, and people don’t really want to have nuanced discussions about the nitty -gritty of the best way to train surgeons and community outreach and all those things,” Cottingham said. “They’re not as emotionally evocative.”

‘Hands-on’ educational value

Cottingham completed her first few years of veterinary school at Utah State University and came to WSU as part of a partnership between the schools. She found herself drawn to surgical practice, she said, after working in clinics in the Salt Lake area where she assisted in spay and neuter procedures on small animals.

She first learned about the terminal labs while touring the campus ahead of her move to Pullman.

“I was really surprised to learn in that moment that WSU still did terminal labs, because it’s kind of one of those things that a lot of students know about as being this thing that happened in the past,” Cottingham said. “In the past, vet schools would have dogs, and students would operate on their dogs multiple times over the course of several weeks, and then they euthanize them with the last procedure.”

Students in terminal labs tend to do multiple surgeries on an animal, with the final operation finishing with euthanasia. While small animal labs are increasingly things of the past, large animals tended not to be part of prior industry conversations.

“I think we should treat all animals with the same moral consideration, regardless if they’re someone’s pet, or they’re an animal in a shelter or they’re wildlife, or they’re going to be used for food or clothing,” Cottingham said. “That animal doesn’t know what its perceived use is, and so they deserve the same dignity and moral consideration as any other animal.”

Use of any animal for research or education must be in accordance with federal guidelines on animal welfare. Research labs have an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee in place tasked with reviewing each case and administering those federal policies. WSU’s practices were reviewed and approved by the school’s board, and Borjesson said they are in accordance with the Animal Welfare Act, U.S. Department of Agriculture policies, and American Veterinary Medical Association guidelines.

In justifying the scientific and education value of the surgeries to the committee, professor and study lead Kelly Farnsworth wrote that alternatives like simulations “do not offer the ‘hands-on’ experience that live animals do.” The students get the basics down in alternative procedures on dummies, or simulations, in their early courses over the first two years, he said.

“Live animal surgical procedures provide students the opportunity to apply those basic skills to realistic clinical situations and develop advanced skills needed to perform surgery in the future,” Farnsworth wrote in the protocol approved by the committee.

He added that the practice provides invaluable surgical experience for future veterinarians, that the animals are treated with great respect, and every effort is made to reduce or eliminate any discomfort during the staging process and later surgical procedures.

“To develop the manual skills needed to perform surgery, students must do surgery,” Farnsworth wrote. “This class is designed to train students in surgical techniques on live tissues that can not be replicated in other ways.”

Cottingham said she first broached the topic of ending the labs altogether with university leadership in 2024. She was elected the curriculum representative for her class, and started by sending out a veterinary-collegewide survey in which she asked students whether they were aware of the elective, their thoughts on terminal labs and the ethics at play.

She received a lot of backlash from her peers, Cottingham said, but the schools curriculum committee was receptive. She opted not to take the course herself, instead reaching out to Borjesson to continue the discussion around alternatives as she continued her studies.

“That’s always been my strategy, and my desire was for everything to be very professional, very by-the-book,” Cottingham said.

The fallout

Her relationship with the dean was fine until Cottingham took portions of their communications and emailed them to the class below her earlier this school year, she said.

Cottingham said she wanted to notify them of the procedures and her belief the animals could be adopted instead of operated on.

She said the dean “replied all,” telling the cohort of students the bits of their conversation were taken out of context. Cottingham has felt ostracized since, which led her to reach out to Heath, whose organization aims to support veterinarians and veterinary students critical of current practices “from bullying,” while also advocating for animal welfare.

“This campaign originally started because veterinarians were trying to get them to turn to more effective methods,” Heath said. “We had to bring in more animal rights orgs to get them to take urgent action.”

Heath is doubtful the school received threats as a result of her and fellow animal rights organizations’ campaigns, but added that she does not condone “any sort of violent rhetoric.” The entire situation should not be used to stifle the free speech of students at the university, she said.

“I’ve certainly received threats too, for my advocacy; I have been ostracized,” Heath said. “I would love to see what some of the threats are.”

“We’re disappointed the school was able to use that as an excuse,” Heath later added.

Heath and Cottingham said their advocacy should not be viewed as taking an educational opportunity away from students. They would prefer alternatives, like partnerships with local ranchers, to provide similar experience on animals in need of care.

“Instead of trying to end surgical experience, I just want the surgical experience to be real and helping animals in need,” Cottingham said. “I don’t want this course to end. I want it to be better and more useful for everybody.”

The students currently in the lab will be given full credit for the work they’ve already completed, the university statement reads. The equine portions of the course were to end at the end of the semester anyways, and moving forward, students will “gain essential surgical experience through clinical training opportunities and advanced simulation technologies that reflect evolving practices.”

WSU spokeswoman Pam Scott declined in an email to share information about what would become of the horses slated for the lab. The email also did not disclose what happened to the goats.

Heath said her organization is trying to ensure the horses end up at a sanctuary.

“Our work still isn’t over,” she said.

Cottingham said she was encouraged by the university’s curriculum changes underway before the public outcry rattled the college. She’s worried about the students currently in the class being “short-changed” without an alternative in place for the equine surgeries, and what the fallout may be among her peers for her advocacy.

“I’m glad people are talking about it, but I just hope that people can kind of cut through the emotion and hear the reason behind it, and the evidence and the logic behind it,” Cottingham said. “And know this has been going on for a really long time, and I’ve been working solo on this, with administrators, for a long time, just trying to do everything quote, unquote the right way.”