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The kittens were deliberately infected with a parasite in a USDA lab. The kitten shown here was NOT used in these experiments.
Credit: Shutterstock
The title of the report says everything, "Cannibalism of the USDA kitten". This seems hard to believe, but a survey conducted by a non-profit surveillance group reveals that the US government has purchased hundreds of cats and dogs for stellar research projects, projects that the watchdog group refers to as the "best-of-breed" group. ; "useless".
The research, conducted at the Parasitic Animal Parasite Research Laboratory of the USDA's Agricultural Research Service in Beltsville, Maryland, has been instrumental in feeding the "animal remains" of the meat market. euthanized to healthy laboratory cats and injecting mice with the remains of cats infected with parasites, according to NBC News, which acquired a first copy of the report published today (March 19) by The White Coat Waste Project, a group to stop the waste of animal testing.
According to NBC News, the survey found that more than 400 dogs from Colombia, Brazil and Vietnam, as well as 100 cats from China and Ethiopia, had been euthanized to feed at the lab.
Apparently, the lab is also raising kittens to conduct research on the parasite Toxoplasma gondii; cats are the only host animal of parasite eggs. These cats were fed to the brain or muscle tissue of intentionally infected cats. This month, lawmakers announced that they would introduce a bill to prevent the laboratory from infecting cats with the parasite, then euthanize them and incinerate them after the researchers collected them. parasites in animal excrement, according to another report from the NBC News.
The parasite T. gondii causes toxoplasmosis, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) considers to be one of the leading causes of death attributed to food-borne illnesses in the United States; Humans can become infected after eating food or water contaminated with infected cat feces or by eating undercooked meat from animals carrying parasite cysts in their tissues, according to the CDC.
Although lab research has resulted in some discoveries related to toxoplasmosis, according to report co-author Jim Keen, a former USDA scientist, the lab has not released any major breakthrough in this area for 20 years, he told NBC News. (In 2015, Keen denounced the ill-treatment of cattle by the USDA in Nebraska.)
Here are some details of the report:
Originally published on Science live.
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42 cats bought in China were killed and their hearts and tongues were sent to the USDA lab and injected to mice.
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48 stray cats gathered in Ethiopia were killed and their hearts sent to the laboratory and fed to mice.
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34 cats bought at a Chinese meat market were killed and their tongue, brain and heart were fed to USDA laboratory cats.
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309 dogs acquired in a shelter in Colombia were killed and their brains, their tongue and their hearts were fed to USDA laboratory cats.
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120 unclaimed Brazilian refuge dogs were killed and the tongue, brain and heart of 20 of them were fed to lab cats.
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42 dogs destined for a Vietnamese meat market were bought and slaughtered; the hearts, brains and tongues of some of these dogs were fed to the USDA laboratory cats.
Originally published on Live Science.
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