Wasteful. Cruel. Unnecessary. Hidden from public view. In the case of the St. Louis Dept. Of Veterans Affairs (VA), one of only two VA facilities still experimenting on dogs, their experiments can be categorized as “all of the above.”
But thanks to White Coat Waste Project’s (WCW) campaign — which generated widespread public opposition to animal experiments — the horrific puppy experiments at the St. Louis Dept. Of Veteran Affairs are finished!
Late in 2019, WCW filed a major transparency lawsuit against the St. Louis VA. We had to do it, because the white coats in charge of the lab REALLY didn’t want taxpayers to know how their money was being wasted.
As we detailed, government bureaucrats openly discussed how they could break federal law, and hide important information about ongoing puppy abuse at the St. Louis VA.
After a lengthy legal process, we won! The St. Louis VA was finally forced to turn over their records. We could see why they tried so hard to keep them hidden from public view. The details were horrifying: after being starved overnight, 32 six-month-old puppies would have inflammatory agents injected into their veins. The puppies’ hearts were then cut out, leaving the poor dogs to die from “exsanguination” — more commonly known as bleeding to death.
You paid well over half a million dollars for those experiments, which were slated to last until 2021…and if they were renewed, they’d go on even longer than that.
When we exposed these ghoulish and grotesque experiments, Congress was outraged. Combat veteran (and Waste Warrior!) Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) had this to say:
I’ve been working closely with the White Coat Waste Project to expose painful experiments on animals being conducted by the federal government. We have made great progress to make these practices illegal, but we must do more to end them once and for all!https://t.co/SM7rmhviGt
— Rep. Brian Mast (@RepBrianMast) November 2, 2020
Congress was right to be mad. In 2019, following WCW’s campaign, the Office of the Inspector General at the Department of Veterans Affairs launched an investigation into dog experiments at the VA.
In a scathing report, the IG found that the VA’s ongoing dog experiments “undermine[d] congressional intent and [were] unresponsive to the public’s concerns.”
In other words, by continuing to perform unnecessary and wasteful experiments on puppies, the St. Louis VA was breaking the law.
Rep. Mast and Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV) responded by successfully securing WCW-backed language in government spending bills to eliminate dog testing at the VA. (Take that, white coats!)
With the VA set to phase out experiments on dogs, cats, and primates by 2025, many VA facilities across America have been ending their cruel animal experiments. By the end of 2021, only two facilities doing experiments on dogs were left: the St. Louis VA and the Richmond VA…which brings us back to the beginning of this blog.
WCW has just received confirmation that the St. Louis VA has ended its ‘puppy heart removal’ experiments once and for all. Their funding ended at the end of 2021, and they have NOT been renewed.
Ending dog experiments at the VA by 2025 is a wonderful goal. You know what’s even better? Ending them even sooner than that.
We’re getting there — thanks to your help.