On Thursday, lawmakers introduced a bill that would stop the government from slaughtering little kittens. Since 1970, 650K of your taxpayer dollars have been spent incinerating baby cats after the government is done experimenting on their adorable little souls.
The bipartisan bill aptly named Kittens in Traumatic Testing Ends Now Act, KITTEN Act for short, aims to stop the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) practice of killing kittens after they are used in agency testing.
The USDA throws the helpless creatures into burning hell fires after it is done conducting experiments on them.
According to the legislators, the USDA lab breeds up to 100 kittens per year and once they’re two months old, they feed them parasite-infected raw meat. The lab then collects the parasitic eggs that form in their stool for experimental use, and slaughter and incinerate the 3-month-old felines.
“The USDA’s decision to slaughter kittens after they are used in research is an archaic practice and horrific treatment, and we need to end it,” Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., said in a press release. “The KITTEN Act will protect these innocent animals from being needlessly euthanized in government testing, and make sure that they can be adopted by loving families instead.”
The USDA is researching toxoplasmosis, “a leading cause of death attributed to foodborne illness in the U.S.,” according to the Centers for Disease Control. The agency defends its research by claiming it has helped to cut the infection by more than 50% in the U.S.
Why do they have to set the kittens on fire when they are done experimenting on them? The USDA claims the little creatures pose a risk to potential owners because of their experiment-induced infection. Not so say the CDC, the American Veterinary Medical Association, and the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges. The kittens can be treated and adopted out to live a happy life after the gruesome animal testers are done with their experiments. The USDA has admitted to Congress it has burned almost 3000 kittens since 1982.
It’s amazing that whoever is in charge of this experiment didn’t contact a veterinarian to find out if the kittens could be saved and treated after infection when the experiments started. You can get a good sense of how oriented toward animal welfare these monsters in the animal experimentation business are. Even worse, the USDA has been doing this since 1982, almost 40 years. Still haven’t found the answers? Perhaps it’s time to shut down this entire boondoggle.
The bill is championed by the watchdog group White Coat Waste Project which brought these practices to light. They obtained pictures of adult cats that were used for breeding inside the USDA lab through a FOIA request, and recently started an advertisement campaign against the labs in Maryland.
They also created specific Facebook ads targeted at USDA employees encouraging them to “blow the whistle” on the agency for a $1,000 reward. The comments are filled with USDA employees rejecting the claim that their employer kills kittens, but vice president of the White Coat Waste Project, Justin Goodman, the owner of two cats himself, believes they don’t know what is going on inside the USDA.
“The USDA is full of misleading claims and outright fabrications,” Goodman told ABC News. “They continue to defend this archaic practice because of institutional inertia and money.”
It’s hard to argue with a bill like this. Hopefully the legislation can sail through Congress and the little fur balls can find loving forever homes.
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