Over the last three years, 44,000 dogs were used in experiments each year on average in the United States. In addition, tens of thousands of puppies destined for labs are born at breeding facilities every year.
More than 250 institutions in the U.S. report using dogs in experiments each year, including chemical, pesticide and drug companies (and the contract laboratories that carry out dog tests for these companies)
Typically kept alone in barren steel cages with little room to move around and few, if any, comforts, such as toys or soft bedding, dogs often become unbearably lonely and anxious, often devoid of the companionship of other dogs or the loving touch of a human. The painful—often excruciating—procedures that they experience include being intentionally injured, implanted with medical devices, infected with diseases, subjected to repeated surgeries, force-fed drugs, pesticides or other substances and observed for harmful effects such as heart failure, liver disease, signs of cancer or even death. They typically also watch (or hear) other animals suffering, including their own parents, siblings or babies.
- The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), through its approval processes to evaluate the safety of drugs, devices and other products, often requests that companies provide data gathered from multiple animal tests, including tests that are often carried out on dogs.
- The EPA requires that new pesticides be tested on dogs for 90 days before they can be registered.
- The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Department of Defense (DoD) and other federal agencies either carry out experiments on dogs themselves or provide funding to other facilities to conduct experiments on dogs.