U.S. Lawmaker Launches Lifesaving Effort To Stop Cruel Dog & Cat Testing

A powerful new effort is underway in Congress to finally end taxpayer-funded animal testing, and it could bring lifesaving change for countless dogs and cats. Rep. Nancy Mace has introduced an amendment to defund the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)’s painful experiments on dogs and cats, following months of investigations and advocacy by White Coat Waste (WCW), the watchdog organization leading the effort to stop government funded animal testing.

The amendment builds on a series of recent victories. Just last month, following direct collaboration between Rep. Mace and WCW, President Trump signed legislation ending funding for the military’s painful experiments on pets. Earlier, WCW helped secure historic laws and policies that eliminated dog and cat testing at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Now, Rep. Mace is partnering with WCW to extend those protections to additional agencies, including the NSF, which has long used taxpayer dollars to fund cruel and unnecessary experiments on puppies and kittens.

WCW investigations have exposed shocking abuses funded by the NSF, including experimental drug tests involving repeated injections into puppies’ eyes and projects at Auburn University that bred kittens and deliberately made them obese for weight-loss drug testing. One of the most disturbing cases uncovered involves Auburn University’s kitten mill, which for nearly half a century has bred thousands of sick kittens for painful and deadly taxpayer-funded experiments.

Video obtained by WCW shows a kitten in the same Auburn lab struggling to walk, described by staff as close to death at just six months old. The facility breeds cats for NSF-funded experiments, deliberately creating debilitating genetic disorders that cause paralysis, vision loss, tremors, and early death, all at taxpayers’ expense.

“Experimenting on pets is cruel, wasteful and un-American, and taxpayers should not be forced to foot the bill,” said Anthony Bellotti, who once worked in an animal testing laboratory before founding White Coat Waste. “WCW’s campaigns have already exposed and ended dog and cat testing funded by the Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs. Now, and thanks to Rep. Nancy Mace’s leadership, the National Science Foundation’s inhumane dog and cat labs that WCW uncovered are on the chopping block, too.”

For years, WCW has exposed how dogs and cats obtained from notorious, taxpayer-funded breeders are subjected to cruel experiments by federal agencies, including the NIH, USDA, the military, the VA, and now the NSF. Their work has already dismantled multiple federal testing programs, and Rep. Mace’s amendment represents the next crucial step toward ending this suffering.

WCW is also working with Rep. Mace to pass her bipartisan Protecting Animal Abuse and Waste (PAAW Act), which would end NIH funding for painful research on dogs and cats. The NIH is the nation’s largest funder of animal testing and earlier this year claimed it was working to phase out experiments on dogs and cats. Yet records obtained by WCW reveal the agency has continued to bankroll these cruel studies. Dogs and cats do not belong in laboratories, and growing bipartisan momentum in Congress shows this outdated system can, and must, finally be dismantled.

TAKE ACTION! Email your members of Congress to urge them to pass the PAAW Act, HERE!

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