Rep. Mast: The fact that the USDA has been rounding up pets and other innocent dogs and cats in foreign countries, including at Chinese meat markets condemned by Congress, killing them and feeding them to lab cats back here in the States is simply disgusting and unjustifiable.
DAREH GREGORIAN: ‘U.S. government scientists bought hundreds of dogs and cats from “Asian meat markets” and conducted experiments that included feeding their remains to healthy lab cats for needless research, according to a disturbing watchdog report… The experiments were carried out at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service’s Animal Parasitic Disease Laboratory in Beltsville, Md. The facility was already under fire from some lawmakers for killing cats intentionally infected with T. Gondii, the parasite that causes toxoplasmosis…
Other experiments at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s lab in Maryland included feeding dog remains to cats and injecting cat remains into mice, the report by the White Coat Waste Project (WCW) found. The group is a non-profit that combats wasteful government spending on animal testing. The experiments — some of which the agency said in scientific reports were aimed at studying different forms of a parasite that causes the food-borne illness toxoplasmosis — are believed to have been conducted between 2003 and 2015. The animals that were euthanized to be used as lab food included over 400 dogs from Colombia, Brazil and Vietnam and over 100 cats from China and Ethiopia.
“Some of these cats and dogs were purchased by the government from the same Asian meat markets that the U.S. Congress roundly condemned in a House Resolution” last year, said the report by the WCW. The group plans on releasing its findings, which were culled from the USDA’s own research publications, in a report to Congress entitled, “USDA Kitten Cannibalism”… “The details of these kitten experiments keep getting worse and they need to end now,” said Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., the lead Republican co-sponsor of legislation aimed at stopping the cat killings. “The fact that the USDA has been rounding up pets and other innocent dogs and cats in foreign countries —including at Chinese meat markets condemned by Congress — killing them and feeding them to lab cats back here in the States is simply disgusting and unjustifiable”.’ SOURCE…
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