WAIT. Why Is The USDA Breeding – And Then KILLING Kittens?

WTF is going on here?!

A BIPARTISAN group of politicians is asking questions. GOOD questions.

WHY have we been paying for the USDA to breed – and then KILL kittens since the 1980s?

WHAT IS EVEN GOING ON?! IS THIS NECESSARY?!

I mean… while I LOVE animals, I DO understand that animal testing is sometimes necessary to save human lives. But why would you need to kill kittens for over 3 decades?

Fox News has the scoop:

Since the early 1980s, and possibly much longer, this USDA lab has been home to a long-running and gruesome series of experiments in which at least 3,000 kittens have been bred, fed parasite-infected raw meat for two to three weeks and then killed with a shot of the powerful anesthetic ketamine to the heart before being incinerated.

…Oh no. Ugh. This makes me sad. I have two kitties and I wanna go hug ’em right now.

After the kitten killings were exposed by watchdog group the White Coat Waste Project earlier this year, a bipartisan group of lawmakers are now pressuring the USDA to stop what Congressman Mike Bishop, R-Mich., calls both an “inhumane practice” and “an example of wasteful spending.”

“I first started out looking into wasteful government spending,” Bishop told Fox News. “But when I found out about this, it became even bigger and more important.”

Bishop added: “This goes way beyond animal testing.”

No – this isn’t some crunchy PETA thing. This is legitimately troubling.

According to documents obtained by White Coat Waste Project, the USDA has been breeding around 1,000 cats every year and infecting them with a parasite that can cause toxoplasmosis, a disease that can cause miscarriages and birth defects in humans and is a leading cause of death from foodborne illness in the U.S.

After infecting the cats with the parasites, researchers at the USDA collect samples of the feline feces for about two to three weeks before killing them, even though studies indicate that the cats can be treated for the disease and there is only a small chance that humans could contract the illness from handling infected cats.

So… why do the cats get killed?

Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue asked that EXACT same question:

In May, Bishop sent a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, calling for an investigation into the program and questioning why the kittens are killed instead of being offered for adoption.

The White Coat Waste Project then filed a lawsuit against the USDA in June amid claims that the department was blocking its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for more information regarding the research, including the veterinary records for around 3,000 cats that have been killed since 1982.

Justin Goodman, the vice president for advocacy and public policy at the White Coat Waste Project, told Fox News he believes the USDA has violated FOIA by failing to produce the requested information and that the department has been able to carry out these tests for so long because there is little oversight on its work.

“Uncle Sam has kept this testing a secret for over 50 years,” Goodman said. “Now that people – Democrats, Republicans, independents – know about this, they want to see it relegated to the litter box of history.”

This is downright WEIRD.

No seriously – why is this study taking so long? Why are the cats being killed instead of being adopted? Why are we paying for all of this?

I am GLAD this has become a bipartisan issue.

Obviously, we have bigger fish to fry right now – but if you ask me, this is all part of draining the swamp.