“These beagle puppies… have their throats slit!”
On June 3, 2024, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis accused Dr. Anthony Fauci and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of funding horrific animal abuse: torturing beagles and bunnies in experiments; injecting dogs with ticks; and even slitting puppies’ throats.
“With all due respect, I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” Fauci responded. “The experiments go through strict regulatory processes of the humane treatment of animals.”
The allegations of animal abuse made against Fauci have been mocked by the media. Prominent newspapers such as The Washington Post have described them as right-wing conspiracy theories.
But this week, the watchdog group White Coat Waste (WCW) dropped proof on social media that it was Fauci, and not Malliotakis, who lied. In an invoice WCW published on X/Twitter, the NIH is shown to be paying for 46 “cordectomies”—the slitting of a dog’s vocal cords. The procedure, which has been criticized by the American Veterinary Medical Association because of the risk of “[b]leeding, acute airway swelling, infection, coughing, gagging and aspiration pneumonia,” was not performed for any medical purpose. Rather, by the NIH’s own admission, it was done to “reduce noise” in a facility packed with distressed dogs. The vivisectors didn’t want to hear the beagles cry while they were force-fed experimental drugs.
And the name of the company paid to engage in this brutal practice? None other than Marshall BioResources, which violated New York’s animal cruelty law, which bans unjustifiably mutilating an animal, by performing the cordectomies. WCW’s evidence shows indisputably that the payments to Marshall were part of a $1.68 million grant from the NIH. And even The Washington Post now acknowledges that the NIH funded beagle experiments—and attempted to hide it by claiming it was a right-wing conspiracy theory.
Join the Save the Dogs Summit in Madison, WI from Sept 4-6 as we share essential skills to rescue the Marshall dogs!
The NIH beagle controversy, however, is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to government cover-ups of animal abuse. Over the last few decades, the government has systematically conspired with corporations to break the law in order to sustain an abusive industry. Consider this: while Fauci testified about the strict regulatory processes and humane standards in animal experiments, the government’s own internal watchdog, the Inspector General (IG), concluded that the enforcement of those humane standards was “basically meaningless.” The IG condemned the USDA for partnering with animal abusers—e.g., waiving fines and illegally redirecting those penalties into reinvestments into cruel facilities—rather than holding them accountable.
And yet in the last few years, enforcement of welfare standards has somehow gotten even worse. There was just 1 fine for violating the Animal Welfare Act (out of the millions of protected animals) in the first 7 months of 2025, a dramatic decline from the dozens in a typical year—already a very low figure. Fauci repeatedly defended animal experiments as “strictly regulated” even as he knew (or should have known) enforcement was going from meaningless to nonexistent. It’s as if the Mayor of New York City wrote one parking ticket in 2025 then proclaimed his city was free of crime.
Why does the government lie about animal abuse?
The influence of money is part of the answer. The enforcement system for animal welfare laws is a classic example of what’s called regulatory capture, a process by which an industry takes over its supposed government regulators. Over $10 billion in federal taxpayer dollars goes into the animal testing industry annually, and contractors, lobbyists, and even private security companies go back and forth between industry and government positions. These ties are apparent with Anthony Fauci. When he was given the Legend in Leadership award at Yale University in 2021, it was the CEOs of Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson—companies that have been implicated in abusive animal experiments—who presented him the award. Fauci was part of a government that should have been “strictly regulating” these companies. But it would be impolite to accuse pharma CEOs of animal abuse when they are bestowing you a lavish award.
But there is another and more important reason the government covers up the abuse: they’ve never faced consequences for lying. While animal advocates have complained about cruel experiments for decades, those responsible for the abuses never faced any penalties. Anthony Fauci is an example of this. Fauci was co-author of a study that injected endangered chimpanzees with the HIV virus in 1984. HIV experiments of this sort were condemned by AIDS researchers and primatologists, including Jane Goodall, as profoundly unethical, and the government eventually phased out the funding. But Fauci never faced any career consequences. To the contrary, he rose to the pinnacle of his field, overseeing billions in grants for the same unethical animal experiments he himself performed on chimps.
But that is now changing. Malliotakis’s grilling of Fauci shows that animal abuse is now a political liability. (Fauci’s recently-released diary shows that, when former President Barack Obama called him in 2021, one of his main complaints to Obama was that people were calling him a puppy killer.) Similarly, the politicians who covered up animal abuse in Wisconsin at Ridglan Farms—District Attorney Ismael Ozanne and Sheriff Kalvin Barrett—are now among the most loathed elected officials in the state. Sheriff Barrett’s Facebook page is filled with people condemning him for supporting the torture of dogs.
That bodes well for the future. Anthony Fauci rose to the highest levels of government power, while lying about the abuse of animals in labs. But he will be among the last of his kind. The truth eventually comes out.
The public doesn’t want our government funding animal torture. It wants our government to stop it.
Other stuff
You will not want to miss the Save the Dogs summit from Sept 4-6. We can save the dogs at Marshall, and around the nation. But we will need you trained to be the best activist you can be. This summit will be indispensable, as we’ll be doing hands-on workshops on how you can help save the dogs. This includes an immediate opportunity: preparing you for the March to Abolish Animal Testing which starts on September 12 in Albany, NY and ends on September 26 at Marshall’s massive facility in North Rose, NY.
Preliminary hearings for the 51 Ridglan defendants will be on Sept 2. If you can come early to the summit, join the courtroom mobilization as we defend the rescuers who saved dogs from Ridglan Farms, and push for a precedent for the right to rescue.
We are now holding weekly all-network Zoom calls on Saturdays at 1 pm ET / 10 am PT. This week, I’ll be discussing the revelation that the NIH funded cordectomies at Marshall—and how we plan to use this and other evidence to press the government to save all the 16,000+ dogs trapped in cages at their facility. We will need your help! Here’s the link for today’s call.
That’s all for now!
I feel violated and raped every year I'm forced by threat of fine an imprisonment if I don't pay my taxes, which then go to fund animal torture that I have never wanted. It's a demonic system, and I'm sick of the Government being exempt from lawsuit and consequence. Why can't we sue for being forced to pay taxes for things that are inhumane and we might never have wanted?
Nicely done, Wayne! This post clearly and persuasively makes the case against Marshall and other breeding and experimentation facilities that engage in horrific animal cruelty.
As you and I have discussed, though, by focusing exclusively on animal abuse and cruelty and violations of various laws, we risk creating a perception that we’d be okay with the breeding and experimentation if only it were being done humanely. But of course, the problem isn’t just (or even primarily) the cruelty; it’s the far more fundamental issue of use — these are sentient beings whom we don’t have the right to use and exploit as we wish. The cruelty is a symptom of the speciesism that underlies all animal exploitation: animal testing of course; but also the fur trade, animal agriculture, hunting, and many other forms of animal exploitation. It is the speciesism — the pernicious and pervasive belief that humans are somehow entitled to use and exploit our nonhuman relatives as we wish — that we must ultimately overcome. We need to be very clear that the abuse is only possible is because of the underlying problem of speciesism that is responsible for the enslavement, torture, and slaughter of hundreds of billions of sentient beings every year.