UPDATE (4/2/19): Following a year-long White Coat Waste Project campaign, the USDA announced that its kitten slaughterhouse will close permanently and the 14 surviving cats will be adopted out. Read more.

Original post (03/19/19)

Just when you thought the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) “kitten slaughterhouse” couldn’t be any more wasteful and abusive, we just dropped this bombshell:

As first reported by NBC News, and covered by the Washington Post, Newsweek, Time and scores of other outlets, a new report released by White Coat Waste Project found that the USDA has been using our tax dollars to buy live cats and dogs from meat markets in China, as well as round up stray animals and pets in other foreign countries, kill them, and feed their remains to kittens at the USDA’s lab in Beltsville, Maryland. The report also documents in detail how the USDA’s expensive kitten experiments are outdated, wasteful, and unnecessary, and how the USDA has made false claims to Congress and the media.

Some of the USDA’s horrific experiments using cats and dogs procured abroad include:

34 cats were purchased at a meat market in China, killed, and their tongues, brains, and hearts were fed to cats at the USDA 

42 cats were purchased at markets and farms in China, killed, and their hearts and tongues were fed to mice at the USDA

42 dogs destined for meat markets in Vietnam were purchased, killed and their hearts, brains and tongues were fed to cats at the USDA

120 unclaimed shelter dogs in Brazil were killed and their tongues, brains and hearts were fed to cats at the USDA

The report, USDA Kitten Cannibalism, was co-authored by Dr. Jim Keen, a former USDA veterinarian and researcher who blew the whistle on waste and abuse he witnessed in the agency’s research program.

Ironically, the USDA acquired cats and dogs from markets in some of the same countries that U.S. Congress unanimously condemned last year for their dog and cat meat trades “on cruelty and public health grounds,” stating that these facilities “would breach anti-cruelty laws in the United States.”  Yet, USDA has been using Americans’ tax dollars to subsidize this despicable industry and help it stay afloat.

USDA also claimed in writing that for the experiments on cats obtained in China, “the cats were killed humanely according to [China’s] laws for the slaughtering of food animal (sic).” This is deceptive: China does not have any national laws protecting animals slaughtered for food.

Cats and dogs rounded up in China and Vietnam to be sold for meat. A WCW investigation found that USDA purchased animals like these, killed them, and fed them to other cats.