Legislation to End the Use of Dogs and Cats in Laboratory Testing

This week, I joined fellow animal advocates to support the introduction of the COMPACT Act, a bipartisan piece of legislation that would help bring an end to abuse of companion animals, like dogs and cats, in laboratory research.

This life-saving bill is badly needed and long overdue.

Right now, more than 42,000 dogs and 12,000 cats are confined in U.S. laboratories. Thousands more are held at industrial facilities that breed puppies and kittens specifically to sell to these labs. Most of this is funded by our tax dollars.

For decades, the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) has challenged outdated federal laws and regulations that allow dogs and cats to be subjected to painful experiments, sometimes without pain relief. Even when animals survive and are healthy enough to be released, they are usually killed instead of being adopted out.

As a scientist who studies psychological distress in dogs used and rescued from laboratories, I have seen first-hand how lab confinement and experimentation traumatize animals. For example, dogs are forced to run on treadmills until they suffer from heart attacks. When returned to cages that legally do not need to be any larger than the oven in your home, they may spin incessantly or cower in the corner drooling. Cats, often used in neurological research, endure intentional spinal cord injuries and have electrodes implanted into their brain. These animals are no different than the dogs and cats considered family members who are curled up on couches across the country right now.

But I have also documented how dogs and cats released from laboratories can recover and thrive as loving companions after being adopted. The COMPACT Act doesn’t just cut off funding for these cruel experiments— it requires that dogs and cats still in labs be protected and rehomed, not killed, once their use ends.

ALDF proudly endorses this commonsense bill to cut federal funding for cruel dog and cat tests, improve government transparency, and get as many dogs and cats as possible out of labs and into laps, where they belong.

The COMPACT Act would help end this suffering and put our tax dollars toward science that actually serves human health.