The National Institutes of Health have announced the closure of it labs that experiment on animals and is accused of killing thousands of beagles for more than 40 years
Days after Elon Musk posted on X that DOGE would be investigating the funding of beagle experiments, the NIH director – Jay Bhattacharya – announced that the agency closed its beagle laboratory on the NIH campus.
White Coat Waste project has been exposing the lab’s history of experiments on the puppies including allegedly pumping pneumonia-causing bacteria into the lungs of more than 2,000 beagles bleeding them out, and forcing them into septic shock.
President Donald Trump has been outspoken about ending animal testing and recently cut funding to the NIH prompting the president and founder of White Coat Waste Anthony Bellotti to praise Trump for ending the project saying,
“Taxpayers and pet owners shouldn’t be forced to pay for the NIH’s beagle abuse”
“We applaud the President for cutting this wasteful NIH spending and will keep fighting until we defund all dog labs at home and abroad. The solution is simple: Stop the money. Stop the madness!”
A few months after Trump took office, the FDA announced it would phase out an animal testing requirement for antibody therapies and other drugs and instead test on materials that mimic human organs.
Lee Zeldin of the EPA also announced his agency would reinstate a 2019 policy from the first Trump administration to phase out animal testing.
In 2021 PETA exposed Anthony Fauci for allegedly approving the funding for tests where beagle puppies were drugged, and their heads were locked in cages filled with hungry, infected sandflies.
In 2024, Envigo, the Indiana-based company that bred the beagles for research pleaded guilty to neglecting thousands of dogs at its Cumberland, Virginia, breeding facility, and has been ordered to pay more than $35 million in fines, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association.
That facility is now closed and 4,000 beagles were given to good homes.
