WAN Exclusive Prompts Congressional Call To RFK Jr. To Cut NIH Dog Lab Funding

Citing World Animal News (WAN)’s exclusive report last week, U.S. Representative Nancy Mace (R-SC) sent a letter to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., raising concerns about the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH)’s continued funding of painful experiments on dogs and cats and calling for an end.

Representative Mace’s letter to Secretary Kennedy includes WAN’s reporting on watchdog group White Coat Waste (WCW)’s investigation, which found that the NIH just awarded another $826,381 to a long-running dog laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn). The funding was issued under a continuing grant on January 12, 2026, which has been active since 1986 and has already cost taxpayers more than $46 million.

According to WCW, the UPenn lab has operated for decades as what critics describe as a federally funded puppy mill. Since the 1970s, dogs at UPenn have been bred to develop painful, degenerative vision disorders and subjected to invasive experiments, funding year after year by NIH grants.

WAN also reported that the NIH has continued to award millions of dollars to other research projects involving painful and deadly experiments on dogs and cats, both in the United States and abroad.

In her letter, Mace references WCW investigations and raises concerns that the NIH has continued to extend funding for existing projects, even though it appears to have the authority to discontinue them, despite committing last summer to phase them out. She cites WCW investigations that uncovered recently renewed NIH grants for experiments that induce strokes in puppies and kittens, as well as projects that breed dogs to suffer from blindness and bleeding disorders.

While acknowledging Kennedy’s role in closing the NIH’s last intramural dog research laboratory, Mace argues that those actions fall short if the agency continues to bankroll similar experiments through external grants. She has requested a detailed update by February 20, 2026, outlining all steps the NIH has taken since July 2025 to phase out funding for dog and cat research. She is also urging the agency to adopt a policy prohibiting both new and existing NIH-funded projects that harm dogs and cats.

Last week, WCW reported that the NIH has apparently not issued any new grants for dog and cat testing this year but has renewed millions in funding for existing projects. Several media reports indicate that the NIH may be planning to make an announcement about its controversial dog and cat testing in the near future.

“We will not sit silently while helpless animals are being tortured at the expense of the American taxpayer,” Mace shared in a statement on Instagram.

As the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research, Mace argues, the NIH should lead the way in modernizing science, ending outdated animal experiments, and ensuring that taxpayers are no longer forced to fund practices that many Americans find unacceptable.

TAKE ACTION! Please support the PAAW Act and help stop the NIH from funding cruel experiments on dogs and cats in the U.S. and worldwide by signing WCW’s petition HERE!