President-elect Donald Trump’s Division of Authorities Effectivity has elevated the drawback of wasteful spending from think-tank white papers to a nationwide cowl story. With $36 trillion in nationwide debt — greater than $300,000 per taxpayer — there’s lots of spending to slash.
What higher method to begin than by chopping the $20 billion the federal government wastes yearly on dead-end experiments that torture canine, cats and different animals?
Trump 1.0 scored unprecedented wins in opposition to costly and ineffective animal exams. Listed here are 4 straightforward methods the returning administration and Congress can proceed to save lots of thousands and thousands of animals and cease billions in reckless spending.
1. Defund painful testing on canine and cats.
COVID czar Anthony Fauci could also be gone from authorities, however we’ve uncovered how merciless taxpayer-funded testing on canine and cats he and different bureaucrats greenlit continues at labs in the US, China, Canada and elsewhere.
DOGE not too long ago highlighted various these wasteful packages we’ve uncovered together with the $5 million the Nationwide Institutes of Well being is squandering to inject beagles with cocaine, the $770,000 the NIH shipped to a Russian lab to sever cats’ spinal cords and drive them to run on treadmills and greater than $1 million spent to spin kittens round for motion-sickness experiments.
Eighty-five % of taxpayers oppose authorities funding for painful experiments on pets, a nationwide October ballot discovered.
However we detailed at a congressional briefing final month that greater than 60,000 canine and cats are nonetheless locked in American labs. Finish it now.
2. Lower off China’s animal labs.
The NIH remains to be funding 26 animal-testing laboratories in China, a number of of that are linked to the Chinese language army and authorities. The company not too long ago paid one lab in China greater than $2 million to force-feed and inject puppies and different animals with experimental medication in fully pointless exams.
And although the US Intelligence Neighborhood is worried about China’s improvement and use of bioweapons, the Biden-Harris Division of Agriculture is collaborating with the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s Chinese language Communist Social gathering-run guardian group on a $1 million taxpayer-funded bird-flu gain-of-function mission slated to run till 2026.
After the Wuhan lab’s work led to COVID and the Chinese language authorities refused to cooperate with investigations into the US-funded animal exams there, no animal lab in China ought to obtain one other crimson cent of taxpayers’ cash.
3. Restore Trump’s EPA animal-testing phaseout plan.
President Trump’s Environmental Safety Company made historical past when it rolled out a method to shutter its deceptive, costly and merciless animal exams by 2035 and retire lab animals. This was the primary time a federal company set a tough and quick timeline to finish animal testing, which is unproductive and bested by new expertise. Republicans and Democrats celebrated the transfer.
However the Biden administration rapidly and quietly canceled the phaseout with none try and implement it, and the company is again to forcing pesticides down puppies’ throats and abusing different animals in ineffective experiments. It actually refused to retire growing old rabbits and allow them to die as a substitute.
Restoring Trump’s commonsense animal-testing phaseout plan will shield puppies, public well being and the general public pocketbook.
4. Flush Fauci’s animal labs.
Need to save billions and a ton of animals in a single fell swoop? Crack down on Fauci’s damaged and corrupt Nationwide Institute of Allergy and Infectious Illnesses, the company that introduced us COVID and different real-life horror reveals.
Fauci and his group violated a federal gain-of operate ban, lied to Congress about it and broke the legislation by utilizing personal electronic mail to evade the Freedom of Data Act to debate the lab leak and Beaglegate scandals. The rot runs deep.
However wait — there’s extra. The company is importing bats from Asia for harmful virus experiments, infecting primates with Ebola in its high-risk biolabs, engineering transgender lab animals and delivery extra of our tax {dollars} — $2 billion from 2011 to 2021 — to unaccountable international animal labs than some other company.
We’ve been working collectively for years to chop the federal government’s wasteful and inhumane experiments on pets and different animals. We’re thrilled different like-minded Republicans can be becoming a member of us in Washington to get the job finished.
For the thousands and thousands of People who care about slashing authorities spending and saving animals, that is our second. Cease the cash. Cease the insanity.
Nicole Malliotakis represents New York’s eleventh Congressional District and co-chairs the Congressional Animal Safety Caucus. Anthony Bellotti is president and founding father of government-watchdog group White Coat Waste Challenge.