White Coat Waste Triumph: NIH Dumps New Dog and Cat Lab Funding

We've been following the ongoing efforts to back away from the federal government funding for questionable work done involving research using, among other critters, dogs and cats as subjects. This is a matter that hits close to the hearts of a lot of folks, as dogs and cats are our most popular pets; people understandably don't want to see them used as test subjects.

On Thursday, on X, investigative reporter, podcaster and activist Laura Loomer reported that the fiscal year 2026 federal budget contains no new funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to conduct any research on dog and cat subjects.

🚨 SCOOP: @NIH To Cut Future Dog and Cat Lab Testing Funding Following White Coat Waste Campaign and Exposes🚨

A new White Coat Waste @WhiteCoatWaste review of federal grants reveals that the @NIH has apparently decided to not fund any new dog and cat experiments in fiscal year… pic.twitter.com/yHZDJ57Ug1
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) January 30, 2026

The post is lengthy, but here are the high points.

A new White Coat Waste @WhiteCoatWaste review of federal grants reveals that the @NIH has apparently decided to not fund any new dog and cat experiments in fiscal year 2026. Sources tell me an official announcement from @NIH about dog and cat testing is coming soon, during the second week of February. If this news uncovered by White Coat Waste is confirmed by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. @SecKennedy, this would be another huge victory against wasteful and abusive animal testing for WCW and the Trump administration.

Note that this appears to affect only new grants, not existing ones, unless there is something on existing grants in the expected official announcement.

White Coat Waste has been the only group calling out the NIH and demanding that NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya @NIHDirector_Jay and certified Trump-hater and Fauci-lover Dr. Nicole Kleinstreuer immediately end all funding for new and existing experiments that abuse dogs and cats. Meanwhile, @PETA and other left-wing anti-Trump groups have let Nicole and Jay off the hook. As I’ve reported with White Coat Waste since Tax Day of last year, Jay Bhattacharya and Nicole Kleinstreuer have continued to defend, support and fund Dr. Anthony Fauci’s labs and abusive tests on dogs, cats and other animals in labs in the US and foreign countries like China on US taxpayer dime.

Note that Loomer calls out PETA for not opposing this work; despite PETA's online propagandizing, getting into the specifics like this isn't really their bag. PETA's activism is, like the Platte River in Nebraska, a mile wide and an inch deep. The organization exists primarily to fund Ingrid Newkirk's field trips to shove her face in front of cameras and occasionally to attend upscale Hollywood parties.

This effort, to pressure Congress to defund these projects, has been going on for some time, driven by members of Congress and activists alike. Now it seems to be bearing some fruit.

White Coat Waste Uncovers NIH's Dangerous New Biolab Incident

There are cases in which biomedical research requires animal subjects, and we should note that roughly 95 percent of the animal subjects used in the United States are rats and mice, not dogs and cats. There are good reasons for this; the kind of systemic, whole-organism modeling that is done can be done as accurately on mice and rats as with cats and dogs. Mice are cheaper, easier to house, cheaper to maintain, and easier to work with.

With every passing year, though, our need for animal models decreases. There are still some areas in which animal work can be unavoidable, if for no other reason than that the best computer and AI models we can come up with are laughably crude compared to a biological system. But the NIH has been notoriously unclear as to precisely what they are doing, and in any case, there's no constitutional justification for Washington to be funding this sort of work.

That makes this good news all around.

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