Kittens Slaughtered At Government Facility In PG County: Claim

BELTSVILLE, MD -- Hundreds of cats are being killed as part of a research project at a U.S. Department of Agriculture facility in Beltsville, claims a lawmakers who is demanding answers from the agency.

Michigan Republican Mike Bishop said he has reviewed documents of a decades-old research project at the USDA's Animal Parasitic Diseases Laboratory in Beltsville, and he says they confirm that hundreds of kittens are being bred and then infected with Toxoplasma.

Bishop wrote a letter to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue on Monday that stated he was "shocked to hear that the USDA, the very organization set out to enforce animal welfare laws and regulations, was treating the life of animals with such contempt," according to CNN.

"I’m shocked and disturbed that for decades the USDA—the very organization charged with enforcing animal welfare laws—has been unnecessarily killing hundreds of kittens in expensive and inefficient lab experiments," Bishop said in a tweet. "This week I sent a letter to USDA Secretary Perdue expressing concerns and seeking more information about secretive and problematic experiments on kittens being performed at a USDA laboratory."

The White Coat Waste Project, a nonprofit opposed to animal experiments, claim they have proof of terrible treatment of kittens.

"[D]ocuments obtained by WCW through the Freedom of Information Act–including experimental protocols, animal purchase orders and photographs–show that a USDA Agricultural Research Service laboratory breeds 100 kittens a year, feeds the 2-month-old kittens Toxoplasma-infected raw meat, collects their feces for 2-3 weeks to harvest the parasite for use in other experiments, and then kills, bags and incinerates the kittens like they’re trash," the organization says on its website.

The Agricultural Research Service pushed back on the claims, telling CNN that the estimate of 100 cats used was an over-estimation, and the cats were essential to important research.

"The Agricultural Research Service-USDA (ARS) makes every effort to minimize the number of cats used to produce eggs required to research one of the most widespread parasites in the world," a spokesperson told CNN. "The cats are essential to the success of this critical research."

The Animal Legal Defense Fund claims that an estimated 100 million animals are exploited in biomedical, aeronautic, automotive, military, agricultural, and cognitive research as well as consumer product testing. A federal law called the Animal Welfare Act addresses standards of care for animals at research facilities, but the organization claims that 95 percent of animals that undergo tests are excluded from this law.

(Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)