This letter was submitted to PNAS as a Letter to the Editor on behalf of the 260 co-authors working in the field of animal behaviour and welfare, in response to their publication of the article by Margaret S. Livingstone: “Triggers for Mother Love” (1), published in PNAS on September 19th 2022. They declined to publish it. We store it here to maintain a public record of our response and the strength of collective feeling in our field that journals today have a responsibility to address unethical practices, such as mother-infant separation, to recognise the poor quality of research standards they promote, as well as their failure to advance scientific knowledge.