• White Coat Waste is leading efforts with Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), Senator Gary Peters (D-MI), and Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) to pass bipartisan legislation to retire animals from federal labs.
• The newly reintroduced Violet’s Law, named after a hound rescued by WCW from a taxpayer-funded lab, would require all federal agencies to enact policies allowing lab animals to be retired and sent to sanctuaries and loving homes.
• Last Congress, Violet’s Law had over 120 bipartisan cosponsors in the House and Senate. 
• WCW first worked with the House and Senate to introduce Violet’s Law in 2019.
• Since 2018, WCW’s Give Them Back campaign has secured first-ever lab animal retirement policies at several federal agencies and saved scores of animals. However, most government departments still kill healthy animals instead of retiring them.

UPDATE (3/24/26): Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Gary Peters (D-MI) have just worked with White Coat Waste to reintroduce the bipartisan Senate version of Violet’s Law (aka the AFTER Act) to make animal adoption an option in all federal labs.

In addition to historic progress on lab animal retirement made by WCW under the first Trump administration (as detailed below), last year, following years of WCW’s Give Them Back campaign, the Environmental Protection Agency released rabbits, rats, and fish to loving homes, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated it’s seeking to send primates to sanctuaries. 

Violet’s Law would standardize lab animal retirement as a government-wide policy.

Earlier this month, the New York Times featured WCW’s work, including president and founder Anthony Bellotti’s adoption of Delilah from a federal lab that WCW exposed and shut down in 2019.

ORIGINAL POST (5/8/25)
Days after White Coat Waste’s nine-year-long campaign secured a historic win shutting down the National Institutes of Health’s last in-house beagle lab, Congress is taking action to ensure dogs and other animals locked in government labs can be retired, instead of senselessly killed, when wasteful testing is cut.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by White Coat Waste | Stop Government Animal Tests (@whitecoatwaste)

The bill is named after a hound saved from a taxpayer-funded lab by WCW and requires all federal labs to enact policies allowing animals to be retired and adopted out when testing ends.

Since we launched our #GiveThemBack campaign in 2018, we’re proud to have secured the first-ever policies allowing the retirement and release of lab survivors at government agencies including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dept. of Veterans Affairs (VA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Department of Defense (DOD).  Because of these wins, lucky dogs, cats, and primates have been rescued from government laboratories.

Survivors released from taxpayer-funded labs following WCW efforts: Delilah was retired by the USDA when WCW shut down its Kitten Slaughterhouse. Violet was rescued from a lab by a WCW board member. And Gregory is one of 26 monkeys who WCW got released from the FDA’s now-defunct nicotine lab.

While lab animal retirement enjoys broad bipartisan support, some wayward federal agencies that experiment on animals have yet to create policies allowing it, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

There are thousands of animals locked in federal labs each year. Historically, government white coats usually kill survivors—even healthy and adoptable ones—rather than let taxpayers adopt them, or retire them to sanctuaries. It’s just more convenient. But, polls show that 71 percent of Democrats and 72 percent of Republicans want retirement, not death, for animals who survive experiments in government labs. Scientific research shows that animals released from labs make great pets, too!

Taxpayers “bought” the dogs, cats, rabbits, monkeys, and other animals confined in government laboratories, and we want Uncle Sam to give them back!