PETA is out with new ads showing in graphic detail how animals suffer as the result of lab experiments by companies testing new products. 

Because experiments on monkeys are so gruesome that no TV station would air them, PETA used CGI to create a new TV spot that reveals who pays the biggest price for pharmaceutical drugs tested on animals. The ads clearly make their point, and many outlets still refuse to air them even though no animals were used in the production effort. 

According to PETA, TV stations refusing to run the animated video ads still call them “too graphic” and cite probable “viewer complaints.” 

In the 15-second spot, a customer wants to know how much a prescription will cost—and a computer-generated monkey, tattooed with an ID number and wheezing through a breathing tube, has the answer: “Too much.” The video is part of a new series from PETA that also highlights the hefty price animals pay in the production of cheese and cashmere. These two ads are slated to run widely on TV and movie screens throughout the holiday season. 

“If a computer-generated monkey is ‘too much’ for TV, imagine how consumers would react to seeing real footage from inside laboratories, where monkeys are caged, pumped full of chemicals, infected with diseases, and killed for pointless experiments that don’t benefit human health,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA is rallying viewers to stand against real-life horrors for animals by calling on U.S. laboratories to pivot to sophisticated, human-relevant research methods.” 

The group says that studies show that 90% of all basic research—most of which involves animals—fails to lead to treatments for humans. Yet 110 million animals are killed in U.S. laboratories every year and the National Institutes of Health spends $20 billion (nearly half its annual budget) on animal experiments. 

PETA says the monkey ad was rejected by multiple TV stations in Indianapolis, Reno and Sacramento. 

Only a few individual stations agreed to run the ad in San Diego, Madison, Wisconsin and San Antonio, the latter two near federally funded primate research centers. Also some local stations via Comcast in the Hartford, metro area aired it in time for the Harvard-Yale football game last weekend.  

More stations agreed to air the videos in which a computer-generated calf chained up behind a shop’s register and swarming with flies reveals that a wedge of cheese costs “too much.” The group investigated Daisy Farms production methods. A similar ad reveals the horrific pain that goats are put through to harvest cashmere.  

Both ads are running on area networks in Charleston, South Carolina, Colorado Springs and Sacramento. Additionally, the calf video will be seen at movie theaters in Sacramento and San Antonio. Altogether, PETA’s “Too Much” videos will air nearly 13,000 times on screens across the country. 

PETA worked with production companies PushPull and Antepost on the effort.