• The Oregon State Senate just passed a White Coat Waste-backed bill prohibiting state taxpayer dollars from funding painful experiments on dogs and cats. 
• The bill has now been sent to Oregon’s House of Representatives for a vote.
• Oregon is the second state to pass a WCW-inspired bill defunding painful dog and cat testing. Virginia enacted a similar law in 2018 following a WCW investigation. 
• WCW has successfully enacted federal legislation cutting funding for many experiments on dogs and cats, and is working to do the same government-wide.

Oregon’s State Senate has passed a White Coat Waste-backed bill prohibiting state taxpayer dollars from being wasted to fund painful experiments on dogs and cats, including painful tests where relief is completely withheld. 

The bill, SB 181, flew through the Senate nearly unanimously on April 16 and now heads for a vote in the state’s House of Representatives. 

State Representative David Gomberg is leading the bill, which was supported in the Senate by Judiciary Committee Chairman Floyd Prozanski and Vice Chair Kim Thatcher. All three have excellent track records of fighting wasteful animal tests. 

Oregon resident Jared Goodman, WCW’s General Counsel and Chief Operating Officer, testified alongside Rep. Gomberg in support of the bill at a Senate hearing in early April.

WCW open records requests reveal that Oregon Health and Sciences University (OHSU) is the last facility in the state still conducting deadly dog experiments, which are funded by a private foundation. This bill ensures no state tax dollars are used to fund these or other painful dog and cat experiments in Oregon labs. Rep. Gomberg also championed a successful effort in 2023 to enact legislation improving transparency about OHSU’s primate testing.

Oregon is the second state to pass a WCW-inspired bill defunding painful dog and cat testing. 

In 2018, WCW successfully worked with Virginia legislators to enact a similar bill cutting state funding for maximum pain experiments on dogs and cats. The legislation followed a WCW investigation that exposed how the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ Richmond laboratory was receiving state and federal funding to give puppies heart attacks and force them to run on treadmills.  The experiments were subsequently discontinued. 

WCW will continue to work on state and federal efforts to stop taxpayer dollars from being wasted to abuse puppies and kittens in painful experiments and to retire the survivors. 

The solution is simple: