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US government scientists have fed the remains of cats and dogs bought abroad to healthy cats here in the United States for research purposes. This is according to a surveillance report titled "USDA Kitten Cannibalism". The report also states that cats that were experienced by the USDA's Agricultural Research Service were subsequently killed.
The White Coat Waste Project (WCW), which aims to end government-funded animal experiments, has announced the purchase of nearly 600 cats and dogs. Their tongue, heart and brain were either fed to lab cats or injected into mice.
The goal: to study the parasites likely to cause toxoplasmosis – considered as one of the leading causes of death attributable to a food-borne illness in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .
The animals collected include:
- 42 cats purchased in Chinese animal markets
- 48 stray cats gathered in Ethiopia
- 34 cats bought at a Chinese meat market
- 309 dogs acquired from a shelter in Colombia
- 120 unclaimed Brazilian refuge dogs
- 42 dogs for the Vietnamese meat market
WCW says the project is currently receiving $ 650,000 a year in taxpayers' funds and the agricultural research service has spent $ 22.5 million and killed more than 3,000 cats for the project since 1982. But WCW said that it seems that the number of experienced and killed cats can be higher.
"What is particularly troubling is that some of these cats and dogs were bought by the USDA in the meat markets of some of the same Asian countries (China and Vietnam) that the US Congress strongly condemned for their trade in dog and cat meat "for reasons of cruelty and public health" in a House resolution pbaded unanimously in 2018, "says the report.
Dozens of legislators have signed the law to end the experiments, presented by Senator Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.
"Deeply disturbing that @USDA buys cats and dogs on notoriously inhumane meat markets in Asia, then feeds the meat to the animals they experience," Merkley tweeted on Tuesday. "We can advance scientific discovery while treating animals with humanity – we need the #KITTENAct NOW."
According to the Washington Post, a spokeswoman for the USDA declined to comment on allegations that cats and dogs would be fed cat meat.
L & # 39; study also called the USDA for euthanasia of cats after the experiments were done. The WCW cited several government agencies in its badertion that there was no reason to believe that lab cats would be harmful to the public and therefore should have been removed. However, the CDC website indicates that transmission from animal to human is a way that humans can be infected, because a cat carrying toxoplasmosis can transmit the parasite into its faeces.
According to the CDC, more than 40 million people in the United States carry the Toxoplasma parasite, but very few of them show symptoms because the immune system usually prevents the parasite from causing disease. However, a woman newly infected with Toxoplasma during or just before pregnancy can pbad the infection to her unborn child. This can lead to diseases of the nervous system and eyes for the child.
Getty Images / iStockphoto
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