(Beth Clifton collage)
White Coat Waste Project “lays waste” to cat experiments, but are buildings & equipment still in use on other species?
WASHINGTON D.C.––U.S. Navy Secretary John C. Phelan on May 27, 2025 announced that, “Today it gives me great pleasure to terminate all Department of the Navy testing on cats and dogs, ending these inhumane practices and saving taxpayer dollars.
“This is long overdue,” Phelan said.
Phelan went on to pledge that he would order the Surgeon General of the Navy “to conduct a comprehensive review of all medical research programs to ensure that they align with ethical guidelines, scientific necessity, and our core values of integrity and readiness.”
Laura Loomer. (Facebook photo)
Enlisted tabloids
The Phelan statement confirmed another of a string of political victories for the right-leaning White Coat Waste Project under the Donald Trump administration, while other animal advocacy groups have so far been about as welcome as fleas and ticks on Capitol Hill, and federally funded animal aid projects, including Animal Welfare Act law enforcement, have been cut to the brink of extinction.
White Coat Waste Project founder Anthony Bellotti, 46, a former Republican campaign strategist, enlisted publicity support from The Gateway Pundit, identified by Wikipedia as a “far-right fake news website, known for publishing falsehoods, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories,” and Laura Loomer, identified as a “far-right political activist, conspiracy theorist, and internet personality,” who operates a webcast called Loomer Unleashed.
One might more charitably describe both The Gateway Pundit and Loomer Unleashed as the online era equivalent of the “supermarket tabloid” newspapers extensively enlisted in the early years of the late 20th century animal rights movement by right-wing “scientific antivivisectionist” author/activist Hans Ruesch (1913-2007).
Hans Ruesch with cat.
Ruesch momentum disintegrated
Ruesch built an international following rivaling People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals [PETA] at peak, but achieved no major political victories over cruel experiments. His string of organizations disintegrated amid internal feuding and growing activist recognition that his “scientific” claims rested on the centuries old contention that humans, created by God, are too unlike animals for animal experimentation to yield valid results.
This focal contention clashed with growing scientific and public recognition through DNA research that humans are more closely kin to animals in sentience and evolutionary history than had previously been imagined, leading to the belief now dominant among animal advocates that our close relationship with animals makes cruel experiments inherently unethical.
Beagle, rat, frequent White Coat Waste target Anthony Fauci, & Justin Goodman. (Beth Clifton collage)
White Coat Waste vs. PETA
The underlying philosophy of the White Coat Waste Project combines elements of both the Ruesch and PETA approaches: animal experiments are cruel, emphasizing bizarre experiments on cats, dogs, and sometimes monkeys, and a waste of money, since they seldom produce new information of value.
The White Coat Waste Project style is mostly a PETA knockoff, reflecting that White Coat Waste senior vice president of advocacy and public policy Justin Goodman previously was a PETA investigator.
But while PETA supporters tend to lean left, the White Coat Waste Project leans decidedly Trumpist right.
The rhetoric from both PETA and White Coat Waste relies heavily on emotive buzz words.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Trump” department & “pet abuse”
“We’re thrilled,” said Bellotti, “that 10 days after the Trump Department of Defense canceled cruel cat tests exposed by White Coat Waste, the U.S. Navy is now cutting all wasteful experiments on dogs and cats following our investigations and campaign.”
(See Enlisting Trump “blogosphere,” White Coat Waste kills cruel cat experiments.)
“Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to pay for pet abuse in Navy-funded labs,” Bellotti continued, “and now, thanks to a White Coat Waste campaign, including powerful advocacy from Elon Musk, Laura Loomer, Representative Nancy Mace (R-SC), military veterans, and others, they won’t have to.”
The target audience is unlikely to care that the correctly identified U.S. Navy is under the U.S. Department of Defense, not the “Trump Department of Defense,” nor that the purpose-bred cats used in experiments are almost as many generations away from any who ever were pets as lab rats are from sewer rats––not that this makes any difference to either species in their capacity to suffer.
Anthony Bellotti and Delilah.
(White Coat Waste photo)
Delilah the cat
Bellotti struck a more personal note in a Facebook posting introducing his own cat Delilah, who “Before she had a name, had a number,” and was previously “locked inside the largest cat experimentation lab in the U.S. government,” where “over 5,000 cats were slaughtered and incinerated,” after being “Force-fed dog and cat meat in cannibalism tests,” at cost to taxpayers of $22.5 million.
“The USDA’s notorious ‘kitten slaughterhouse’ bred, killed, and burned kittens in a secretive federal facility — just 30 minutes from the White House,” Bellotti continued.
“Delilah was a breeder in that lab. Twenty-two of her kittens were taken from her and killed.
“White Coat Waste uncovered how the feds imported dog and cat meat from Chinese wet markets—flown in their personal luggage.
“But for 40 years no animal rights group shut down a single federal feline lab.”
Henry Spira & friend.
“Legacy groups ran naked”
This appears to be true, even though the beginning of modern animal rights activism is usually dated to the success of Henry Spira (1927-1998) in ending federally funded sex experiments on cats at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City in 1976.
“While legacy groups ran naked, chased celebrities, and threw red paint,” Bellotti charged, “the cats kept suffering. Then White Coat Waste stepped in,” and essentially using Spira’s long neglected strategic blueprint, “launched an investigation into Delilah’s lab, exposed it to CNN, the Washington Post, NBC, and more, built a rare bipartisan coalition in Congress to cut the tax money,” and eventually closed the laboratory, after which Bellotti adopted Delilah.
“Delilah’s lab was just the beginning,” Bellotti boasted. “Her rescue launched an unprecedented winning streak that laid waste to every cat lab at the Department of Veterans Affairs,” citing closures of experiments and facilities in Los Angeles and Cleveland in 2021, Louisville in 2022,” and in Cleveland again in 2024.
Ingrid Newkirk with dog cat rat and boy.
“A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy”
But that raises another question.
Just cancelling an experiment, persuading a researcher to use a different species, or even closing a laboratory seldom actually completes the job of preventing animal use in experimentation.
Completing the job means the laboratory itself has to be demolished or repurposed to do something other than animal research.
Otherwise, so long as it remains standing and the host university or corporation is paying the maintenance costs, it will usually be reused for more animal experiments of some kind, perhaps on rats and mice rather than cats, beagles, or monkeys, but as PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk said in 1986, “In their capacity to suffer, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Targets for budget cuts”
Will the facilities used in the cancelled Navy cat and dog experiments be used for similar experiments on other animals?
Responded Bellotti, “Many of these labs, buildings, and infrastructure are outright funded or subsidized by tax money – and thus vulnerable targets for budget cuts. We agree that’s important.
“In our experience, destroying grants and departments is still generally the most effective way to end abuse.
Cases in point, Bellotti mentioned, include “Cat testing at the USDA – these experiments were taxpayer-funded for nearly 50 years, at USDA and pre-USDA by the same vivisector. But it didn’t come back after White Coat Waste.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Facilities & equipment
Also, Bellotti continued, “Cat and dog experimentation at the Department of Veterans Affairs. That was going on since at least the Dwight Eisenhower administration. Not after we cleaned it out.
“Monkey experiments at the Food & Drug Administration’s National Center for Toxicological Research was at an all-time high,” Bellotti said, “before White Coat Waste. It’s been zeroed out at NCTR for a few years now.”
But what became of the facilities and equipment?
Generations of activist “victories” over cruel experiments conducted by a variety of different government agencies, departments, and private companies, for example, contributed to the evolution of the Hazleton Laboratories beagle kennels in Cumberland, Virginia, built in 1961 and already notorious before the passage of the Laboratory Animal Welfare Act in 1966, into the later notorious Covance kennels, a target of protest for more than 20 years, then into the LabCorp kennels, and finally into the Envigo kennels, sensationally notorious in 2023-2024.
(See Lab beagle breeder Envigo cops $35 million plea. Shareholder suits ahead.)
(Beth Clifton collage)
Obsolete facilities recycled to serve vivisectors for more than 50 years
Those buildings were obsolete by the mid-1970s, but because they repeatedly changed ownership without being demolished, remained in use, producing beagles for vivisection, for more than fifty years.
When the cats are away, will experimenters in the same laboratories play more hell with mice and rats, already the animals most used and abused in biomedical research?
Or will they use even more cats, or dogs, under different auspices?
This remains to be seen.
To be remembered is that the Romans did not sow salt in the fields of Carthage in 201 B.C. just for exercise after 17 years of warfare under the blazing Tunesian sun.
Beth & Merritt Clifton with friends.
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