Progress! U.S. Navy Ends Testing on Dogs and Cats

In a major step forward for animal welfare, the U.S. Navy has officially ended all testing on cats and dogs. At the end of May, Navy Secretary John Phelan announced the termination of these programs, calling the decision “long overdue” and noting that it will both “end inhumane practices and save taxpayer dollars.”

This victory marks another significant shift in federal policy away from outdated and cruel animal testing. The Environmental Protection Agency plans on phasing out animal testing requirements, and the National Institutes of Health recently shut down its last in-house beagle testing lab, where dogs were subjected to horrifying experiments for decades.

Animal testing not only causes immense suffering but is also an outrageous misuse of taxpayer money. For years, a growing bipartisan coalition in Congress has called for an end to these government-funded experiments. The Navy’s decision follows pressure from groups like White Coat Waste Project, a bipartisan taxpayer watchdog that exposed gruesome Navy-funded studies in which cats were crippled and electroshocked in experiments on constipation, incontinence, and erectile dysfunction, while other Department of Defense testing involved poisoning puppies.

Ending these Navy-funded experiments is a major milestone, but our work isn’t over. We will continue pushing until all U.S. military testing on animals is permanently shut down.

You can amplify this progress by signing our petition calling on the U.S. military to end all testing on animals.