Following years of WCW advocacy & A+ leadership from @RepDWStweets, Congress just passed a historic bill to ELIMINATE the VA’s cruel & outdated tests on dogs, cats & primates🐶🐈🐵
👏 Thank you Rep. Wasserman Schultz for working with WCW to end wasteful govt animal tests! pic.twitter.com/VKkzIkElj2
— White Coat Waste Project 🥼🗑️ (@WhiteCoatWaste) March 7, 2024
But, as WCW previously exposed, the VA is trying to ram through a new wasteful and cruel cat experiment before the 2026 deadline.
To coincide with Sunshine Week, an annual event dedicated to increasing government transparency, WCW has launched a new billboard campaign to expose this wrong-headed plan and urge President Biden to cancel it.
Here’s the billboard running in several locations near the VA’s Stokes lab in Cleveland, Ohio 👇
Some background:
Back in 2021, the VA ended its last active cat experiments following a years-long White Coat Waste Project campaign. In 2022 and 2023, not a single cat was confined or abused in the VA’s labs. We’re working to keep it that way.
But, despite protests from WCW, taxpayers, and Congress, VA Secretary Denis McDonough is trying to restart cat testing at the notorious Stokes VA lab in Cleveland.
McDonough personally greenlit an invasive, unnecessary, and illegal $50,000 medical device test in which seven cats (the #Stokes7) would have wiring implanted into their legs and backs, risking paralysis and death.
Taxpayers have a right to know how their money is being spent and shouldn’t be forced to fund wasteful and inhumane experiments on pets!