Lawmakers in both the House and Senate estimated that the USDA has spent $650,000 of taxpayer dollars since 1970 to infect kittens with parasite-infected raw meat and then later kill them.
JULIA JACOBO: ‘The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has announced it will end all experiments on kittens at its Maryland laboratory after a bipartisan bill filed last month described the practice as “taxpayer-funded kitten slaughter.” The kittens were being used for toxoplasmosis research, which will now be redirected, according to a statement from the USDA. Toxoplasmosis is “considered to be a leading cause of death attributed to foodborne illness in the U.S,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…
Last month, a bipartisan bill seeking to stop the experiments, called the Kittens in Traumatic Testing Ends Now Act — or KITTEN Act — aimed to stop the practice of killing kittens after they were used in testing. Lawmakers in both the House and Senate estimated that the USDA has spent $650,000 of taxpayer dollars since 1970 to infect kittens with parasite-infected raw meat and then later kill them. The USDA would breed up to 100 kittens per year and begin infecting them when they were 2 months old, according to the bill. But the USDA told Congress last year that that number is exaggerated, stating that 2,998 kittens have been used for research since 1982′. SOURCE…
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