Op-Ed: Does The Biden Administration Hate Cats?

Published by Tampa Free Press | Opinion: By Justin Goodman

Based on the headlines and kudos that President Joe Biden got last year when he adopted a cat named Willow, you’d think he was a friend to felines.

But it’s open season on kittens inside labs at President Biden’s Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

In recent years, Congress has restricted funding for and shut down wasteful and inhumane cat and dog experiments at the VA following White Coat Waste Project (WCW) campaigns and leadership from Florida lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, including Congressmembers Brian Mast, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Bill Posey, Jared Moskowitz, Matt Gaetz, Greg Steube, Darren Soto, Vern Buchanan, and others.

The VA was the last federal agency using tax dollars to torture dozens of cats each year for painful and unnecessary experiments in its in-house labs. WCW’s investigations found that VA labs were drilling into cats’ skulls, severing their spines, and damaging their brains and forcing them to run on treadmills.

At the VA, kittens described in records as “friendly” and “playful” had experimental devices implanted in them and were then killed and dissected.

The VA abused cats in experiments for over 60 years. But, thanks to WCW’s campaigns and advocacy from veterans and other grassroots and Congressional pressure, President Donald Trump signed legislation in 2018 restricting funding for the VA’s wasteful experiments on cats and dogs and ordering the agency to phase them out by 2025 (a measure Congress has continued to renew annually).

Federal records show that not a single cat was experimented on by the VA or in any other federal agency lab in 2022. We’ve even gotten the VA to adopt out some of the feline survivors.

But, President Biden’s VA Secretary Denis McDonough is personally backing a plan to restart painful tests on cats.

Despite protests from Congress and taxpayers, Secretary McDonough has signed off on a new and completely unnecessary experiment that would waste veterans’ limited resources to implant wiring into cats’ legs and backs and strap them into vests to test an upgrade to a medical device already being studied in humans. The VA even ghoulishly writes in its proposal that it specifically chose cats for this painful experiment because of how playful they are.

This isn’t just inhumane, it’s wasteful.

Sec. McDonough and his staff have misleadingly written to FL Congressman Brian Mast—a combat-wounded Amry veteran—that this cat test is “required” by the Food and Drug Administration, but it’s not. In recent years, we helped lead a successful effort with Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), Rep. Mast and others to enact bipartisan legislation cutting archaic FDA red tape that required ineffective animal testing.

A VA Assistant Secretary also falsely told Congress that cats will undergo “6 months of painless observation and evaluation.” But the VA’s own records obtained by WCW state the cats will undergo pain and distress and possibly suffer infections and debilitation from the invasive experiment.

And the VA’s claim to Congress that “each cat will be paired with a forever home” after the testing is also disingenuous. The VA-approved application for these cat experiments states that some of the cats may be killed. In fact, the Cleveland VA—the same lab where the cat tests are being planned—previously killed dogs that it falsely told the media it had adopted out.

This isn’t the first time the Biden Administration sought to squander tax dollars for unnecessary experiments on pets. Last year, Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Health division tried to waste $2 million for drug testing on dogs but canceled the plan after meeting with the FDA and determining it was unnecessary because alternatives could be used instead. The about-face only came after pressure from WCW, Congress, and taxpayers across the country.

Yet, the VA recently admitted to Rep. Mast that it “has not specifically solicited FDA input” regarding the need for its proposed cat testing.

Sec. McDonough’s excuse for this new cat testing has more holes than Swiss cheese.

Taxpayers and Congress have made it clear that they don’t want the VA to waste the public’s money and veterans’ resources on cruel and unnecessary cat testing.

President Biden—Do you want to be remembered as a friend to felines or a cat killer? The ball (of yarn) is in your court.

Justin Goodman is the Senior Vice President at government watchdog White Coat Waste Project.