• For half a century, taxpayer-funded Auburn University has bred thousands of sick kittens to suffer from debilitating and deadly diseases
• Video obtained by WCW shows one kitten struggling to walk and, according to Auburn, close to death
• Auburn’s cruel experiments on these kittens are funded by taxpayer dollars via agencies including the NIH, NSF, USDA
• Auburn ships kittens to other taxpayer-funded labs, including at the Smithsonian Institution
• Auburn was recently cited for 10 violations of federal animal welfare laws.
• WCW is fighting for access to public records about Auburn’s taxpayer-funded kitten abuse

White Coat Waste is a Project to get the U.S. government out of the cat testing business. For years, we’ve been investigating how dogs and cats end up in experimentation labs funded with our tax dollars by the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Kitten Slaughterhouse to the notorious Envigo puppy mill, to NIH’s Bleeding Beagles colony and an NIH-funded lab that rounds up and abuses abandoned pet dogs.

Now, we’ve discovered an Auburn University lab that for nearly half a century has bred thousands of sick kittens, including the helpless Siamese cat in the video below, destined for painful and deadly taxpayer-funded experiments at Auburn and other labs.

Auburn’s kitten mill breeds cats to suffer from debilitating genetic disorders that, among other things, cause loss of muscle control, difficulty walking, vision loss, tremors, and early death. The sick and paralyzed kitten in the video above obtained by our investigators was bred at Auburn and described as close to death by Auburn’s white coats at just 6 months old.  In the video, you can see other cats confined in Auburn’s lab, too.

In total, Auburn confined and abused 338 cats and kittens in its labs in 2022, a nearly 40 percent increase from the previous year. Auburn reports that around 150 of these cats and kittens are held in its breeding colony.

Auburn’s taxpayer-funded experiments include breeding cats to have brain damage and then killing and dissecting them, overfeeding kittens to induce obesity and diabetes, infecting kittens with Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV) and heartworm, force feeding cats experimental drugs. Some of Auburn’s cats were even dosed with the marijuana derivative CBD.

Auburn’s harmful cat experiments are also funded by taxpayer-funded agencies including the NIH, the National Science Foundation and the USDA.

WCW’s investigation has also obtained documents via the Freedom of Information Act showing that in 2022 the taxpayer-funded Smithsonian Institution procured seven cats bred at Auburn’s kitten mill.

Documents obtained by WCW also detail how Auburn’s animal labs were cited for 10 violations of federal animal welfare laws in August, including having dirty dog and cat cages, failing to search for alternatives to painful procedures, and allowing untrained students to kill rabbits with inadequate anesthesia.

WCW submitted open records requests to Auburn and the Smithsonian in August 2023 for more details about this kitten mill and experiments on these cats but they have refused to turn over documents and we are fighting for their release.

Is this how you want your money spent?