• White Coat Waste Project—with rescued lab beagles in tow—and experts from Johns Hopkins University and the American Bar Association co-hosted a Congressional briefing with Reps. Ken Calvert (R-CA) and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) to criticize the EPA’s senseless animal testing reversal.
• Over 100 Congressional staffers joined WCW’s event to learn about our work to end wasteful government animal testing
• Last year, a blockbuster WCW investigation exposed how the EPA has completely “stripped out” a 2019 plan to end animal tests by 2035 and is killing lab bunnies it was supposed to retire.
• WCW is uniting Democrats and Republicans in Congress to hold the EPA accountable for wasting animals’ lives and millions of tax dollars

Last year, a White Coat Waste Project (WCW) blockbuster investigation exposed how President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reversed the agency’s historic and widely-supported plans to phase out all testing on mammals by 2035 and retire rabbits from its labs.

Citing WCW’s investigation, in February, a bipartisan coalition of more than three dozen Congressmembers led by Lisa McClain (R-MI) and Don Davis (D-NC) demanded answers from the EPA.

WCW Senior VP Justin Goodman (center) with lab survivor Beesly and her adopter–and WCW adviser–Lauren Kellogg (left) and Uno (right) with his dad, John Ramer, Executive Director of the Kindness Ranch animal sanctuary.

Now, joined by rescued lab beagles and experts from Johns Hopkins University and the American Bar Association, WCW is briefing Congress on why the EPA’s move is bad for animals, people, and the environment and urging lawmakers to reinstate the EPA’s animal testing phase-out plan and animal retirement policy.

The May 7 Congressional briefing was also co-hosted by Reps. Ken Calvert (R-CA) and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), who have both worked with WCW for years to end EPA’s animal tests.

Our other special guests were lab survivors Beesly, who was rescued by WCW adviser Lauren Kellogg from a laboratory that tested drugs and chemicals on dogs for agencies like the EPA, and Uno, the very first dog our friends at Kindness Ranch rescued from Envigo.  Envigo was the disgraced puppy mill that WCW exposed for selling dogs to the National Institutes of Health’s cruel septic shock lab and other labs funded by Dr. Fauci.

At the briefing for lawmakers and over 100 of their staffers, WCW Senior Vice President Justin Goodman detailed how in 2018 we first documented that the EPA abuses 20,000 animals annually for wasteful in-house tests, like making animals inhale diesel exhaust, rallied bipartisan Congressional support to stop it and worked with former EPA Administrator (and current WCW advisor) Andrew Wheeler to roll out the historic phase-out plan back in 2019.

WCW also explained how, since the EPA killed its phase-out plan, the agency’s recent wasteful animal testing involves cruelly forcing animals to breathe smoke from handguns, rifles, and lab-simulated wildfires.

JHU’s Dr. Paul Locke and the ABA’s Rebecca Critser discussed the scientific and public health benefits of moving away from wasteful EPA animal testing and the importance of accountability and transparency about these efforts.

Tell Congress to reinstate the EPA’s rabbit retirement policy and plan to eliminate all testing on mammals by 2035!