The Problem
A long pattern of government waste, fraud, and abuse.
Every year, ARS hands out research subsidies to artificially make the multibillion-dollar food industry more profitable. Taxpayers spend $1.2 billion annually here, of which a significant portion funds wasteful and unnecessary animal experiments. But is this how you want YOUR MONEY spent?
- KITTEN SLAUGHTERHOUSE: an ARS lab in Maryland breeds hundreds of kittens, feeds them parasite-infected raw meat, and then kills and incinerates the healthy babies before they're three-months-old. Kitten Slaughterhouse has been taxpayer-funded for nearly 50 years. Your bill? $650K per year.
- HAMSTER PIZZA PARTY: an ARS lab in Northern California fattens up hamsters with pizza and French fries, then force-feeds them "grape, berries, tomato, carrot, and olive pomace, olive leaves and water, mushroom byproducts" to find new uses that "increase the commercial value" of the specialty crops. Your bill? $781K per year.
- DEAD MEAT: At ARS's Meat Animal Research Center, baby animals are "subjected to illness, pain and premature death" in nightmarish experiments for "helping producers of beef, pork and lamb turn a higher profit." Read more via New York Times
News
The kitten is out of the bag. A new White Coat Waste Project investigation has exposed that for nearly half-a-century taxpayers have been funding deadly kitten experiments at a secretive U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland. Now, we're working with Congress to stop it. READ MORE.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is breeding kittens, feeding them bad meat, testing their stool and then euthanizing them even though they're healthy. The practice, which has been going on at USDA's Agriculture Research Service (ARS) facility for decades, was just uncovered by White Coat Waste Project – a taxpayer watchdog group. READ MORE.
Just days after White Coat Waste Project's new exposé of USDA's deadly taxpayer-funded kitten experiments, Congressman Mike Bishop (R-MI)–who was instrumental in breaking the investigation–has joined forces with House Agriculture Committee member Rep. Jimmy Panetta (D-CA) to introduce a bill to end this waste and abuse. READ MORE.
