On Animal Testing, All Agencies Should Follow the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Lead
Originally published by Washington City Paper

A years-long White Coat Waste campaign exposed waste, fraud and abuse at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), saved pets and primates from unnecessary and expensive experimentation, and set historic precedents for other federal agencies to follow.

Right after Veterans Day in 2016–just a few days after Donald Trump was first elected President–White Coat Waste released an investigation and hosted a bipartisan Congressional briefing exposing how the VA was quietly conducting the most painful dog experiments in the entire federal government.

Documents obtained by WCW through the Freedom of Information Act detailed how the VA’s facility in Richmond, Virginia was spending state and federal tax dollars to buy beagle puppies and inject latex into their arteries to cause heart attacks. Dozens of ill-fated dogs were then forced to run on treadmills to stress their damaged hearts. They were denied all pain relief.  Laboratory notes later obtained by WCW showed that the experimenters occasionally fed the abused dogs ice cream, as if that absolved them for the hell they were putting the puppies through.

A few months after the campaign began, a brave whistleblower who worked at the Richmond VA contacted WCW. Todd Woessner, an Iraq War veteran worked as an electrician at the VA, was asked to do a service call in the facility’s basement where he found a room of caged hounds with large, stitched-up lacerations. He had seen a WCW ad about the campaign at a local gas station, so he snapped some photos on his flip phone and then went public.

Woessner joined us on Capitol Hill and shared his powerful message with Congress that, “I don’t think it’s the VA’s job to be doing this to dogs…I think they should be focusing on taking care of veterans.”

WCW and Woessner’s message was well received across Washington.

First daughter-in-law Lara Trump, Veterans Service Organizations like AMVETS and even Trump’s VA Secretary David Shulkin joined WCW’s fight to end the VA’s wasteful dog testing.

Working with veterans in Congress like Reps. Brian Mast (R-FL), Ted Lieu (D-CA), Lee Zeldin (R-NY), and Sanford Bishop (D-GA), WCW enacted the first legislation ever cutting funding for dog testing across a federal agency.

WCW’s campaign, lobbying and coalition work with veterans not only prompted the end of the beagle experiments in Richmond, but shut down all dog experiments across the VA, including in Los Angeles, Milwaukee, and Cleveland. The agency also enacted the government’s first lab animal adoption policy after WCW busted it lying about adopting out dogs it had actually killed.

The effort even led Virginia lawmakers to pass the first state law in American history banning tax funding for the most painful dog testing after WCW exposed what was happening at their local VA.

But the beneficiaries of the campaign weren’t only veterans, taxpayers, and beagles. 

WCW also uncovered that the VA was funding invasive and deadly experiments on cats and primates around the country. 

At the VA’s Los Angeles lab, experimenters drilled holes into cats’ skulls, injected toxins into their brains, and cut off their oxygen as they slept. In Cleveland, cats were abused in constipation experiments.

In Minneapolis, the VA was cutting into monkeys’ skulls and injecting them with angel dust to crudely recreate symptoms of schizophrenia. 

Based on this evidence and the success of WCW’s dog testing campaign, Congress extended the VA funding cuts to cover experiments on cats and primates and for the first time in history Congress set a deadline of 2025 for the reduction and elimination of the testing.

With continued pressure applied by WCW and lawmakers across the political spectrum, one by one, the VA’s wasteful and inhumane kitten and monkey labs dropped like flies.

Finally, last year, the VA’s last active proposal for cat testing was finally canceled after WCW exposed that the Biden administration was trying re-open the defunct cat lab in Cleveland. Following a massive public outcry and bipartisan pressure from lawmakers like Reps. Dina Titus (D-NV) and Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), the VA announced, “We are no longer conducting any feline testing and are now bringing an end to animal research on sensitive species.”

By “sensitive species,” the VA was referring to experiments on dogs, cats and primates.

With dog testing done and cat labs closed down, this only left the last monkey labs at the San Diego VA where the animals were inflicted with spinal cord injuries and forced to walk on treadmills while they were videotaped.

Congress ramped up the pressure in last year’s VA spending bill and this May Trump’s VA Secretary Doug Collins confirmed that the agency was ahead of schedule in ending its last primate labs. 

The VA is now the first agency ever to completely end experiments on dogs, cats and primates, and it was the first to officially promote lab animal retirement, calling it an “ethical obligation.”  

WCW is working tirelessly to get other agencies to follow suit, and some are doing better than others.

In May, U.S. Navy Secretary John Phelan banned all dog and cat testing with the stroke of a pen and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cut millions in grants for dog and cat labs, both specifically crediting WCW’s advocacy and investigations. WCW also worked with the U.S. House, including military veterans Don Davis (D-NC) and Greg Steube (R-FL), to pass legislation that would cut funding for dog and cat testing across the entire Department of Defense.

Meanwhile, WCW has documented how the government’s largest funder of dog, cat, and primate testing–the National Institutes of Health–has been handing out tens of millions of tax dollars to extend and start up more cruel experiments on dogs, cats, and primates.

The historic VA reforms secured by WCW saved millions of tax dollars, spared countless pets and primates from government abuse, and set the standard for all other federal agencies.

In an internal email obtained by WCW via FOIA, the VA wrote, “White Coat Waste has succeeded where so many other antivivisection groups have failed before…get bipartisan traction in Congress by combining cute kittens and puppies with a message about ending waste of taxpayer dollars—that combination works on both sides of the aisle”.

The solution is simple: Stop the money. Stop the madness.