There are two things in life that can never be avoided— death and paying taxes. But sadly, as a D.C. watchdog group is trying to expose, many of these tax dollars are being used to fund animal testing experiments.
White Coat Waste Project is an activist group dedicated to ending publicly-funded animal testing experiments. Their website tagline reads: “You are being forced to pay $15 billion for animal experiments. Save animals and taxes by cutting the root of the problem: wasteful government spending.”
The group has over 50,000 likes on Facebook and is rapidly becoming famous amongst animal lovers for its efforts in protecting innocent animals from cruel, scientific atrocities.
Back in 2017, White Coat Waste Project filed a lawsuit against the Department of Veterans Affairs for the organization’s ‘McGuire research’, which studied various aspects of heart disease by implanting dogs with pacemakers and inducing heart attacks. As ABC8 News reported, “Most, if not all of the dogs, are set to die.”
Animal lovers everywhere pressured the House of Commons to pass an amendment that would defund these types of experiments in the next fiscal year. Congress also introduced the PUPPERS Act (Prevent Unkind and Painful Procedures and Experiments on Respected Species Act), which is currently under review by the House of Commons’ health committee as of July 2017.
Now, White Coat Waste Project has revealed another set of cruel, animal experiments are being held at a Maryland USDA facility. Here, for the past few decades, researchers have been killing 100 healthy kittens per year.
The Beltsville facility in Maryland is used for USDA agricultural research. Researchers at the facility have been conducting research on toxoplasmosis at this location for decades— but the details seemed to have been kept a secret up until now.
“I think most taxpayers would be alarmed and disgusted to learn that for decades they have essentially been funding a USDA kitten slaughterhouse here in Beltsville right outside the Beltway, ” said Justin Goodman, White Coat Waste Project’s vice president of Advocacy and Public Policy.
According to the advocacy’s group blog, documents, photos and animal purchase orders obtained via the Freedom of Information Act have revealed shocking details regarding the facility’s current protocols.
Goodman explained the lab “breeds 100 kittens a year, feeds the 2-month old kittens Toxoplasma-infected raw meat, collects their feces for 2-3 weeks to harvest the parasite for use in other experiments, and then kills, bags, and incinerates the kittens like they’re trash.”
As mentioned, researchers at this facility are studying the Toxoplasma gondii parasite. This parasite is only found in cats, being shed through their feces. CBN said the facility’s kittens are essentially being used to produce this parasite and are then killed afterwards— even though the USDA admits that virtually all kittens are healthy after the experiment.
In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges also agree that cats that have been exposed to Toxoplasma are safe and can be adopted.
Basically, once a cat has shed the parasite they are immune and cannot transmit it to other humans or animals.
The Agricultural Research Service responded to the accusations, telling WJLA that they make every effort to minimize the number of cats used to create parasitic eggs. Because their goal is to reduce the spread of Toxoplasmosis, “adopting these cats could, unfortunately, undermine that goal.”
Most recently, Michigan Congressman Mike Bishop wrote a strongly-worded letter to USDA Secretary Sonny Purdue, criticizing the kitten tests.
It read, in part: “It appears that this project uses kittens as test tubes. Put simply, it creates life to destroy life.”
“While I support the objective of making food safer and protecting people and animals from infectious diseases, we must ensure taxpayer dollars are used effectively, efficiently, and humanely.”
The White Coat Waste Project is urging animal lovers everywhere to demand USDA and Congress defund these deadly kitten experiments and have the innocent kittens adopted.
Please SHARE this with your friends and family.
