It would be hard to come up with an alphabet agency in Washington, D.C., that people would actually miss if it disappeared tomorrow. But if we were to allow people to vote one such agency off the island (or swamp, as it were), there’s a good chance the Environmental Protection Agency would get the axe.
Even on its own website, the EPA acknowledges criticisms: “environmental regulation is too expensive, reduces economic growth, hurts international competitiveness, and causes widespread layoffs and plant closures.”
Those criticisms are bad enough and true, but it looks like we need to add another thing to the list. According to the White Coat Waste Project (the animal welfare organization for sane people), the EPA is launching a new campaign to torture animals — all in the name of social justice.
Allow me to explain. During the Trump administration, EPA chief Andrew Wheeler launched a historic initiative to phase out animal testing by 2035 and retire rabbits from its labs following a WCW campaign. (The partisan lines get interesting here, I promise.) That campaign launched in 2018 after WCW uncovered that the EPA was abusing 20,000 rabbits, mice, and other victims each year in wasteful, cruel, expensive experiments at its in-house labs.
The experiments were heinous and included forcing animals to breathe diesel exhaust and smog, force-feeding animals lard and exposing them to air pollution, blasting animals with loud noises, and stress-testing pregnant animals with light and noise and electroshock of their babies.
Needless to say, there was immense public pressure for the EPA to cease this work. And when President Donald Trump nominated Wheeler, he swiftly announced the most comprehensive plan in U.S. government history to end all testing on mammals by 2035.
But now, following a recent WCW investigation, it seems the Biden EPA has completely abandoned the plan to end animal tests and is back to killing previously retired lab bunnies.
When President Joe Biden nominated Wheeler’s replacement for the EPA, Michael Regan, in February of 2021, he was asked about his commitment to the Trump administration’s plan to eliminate animal torture within the agency. He promised Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) under oath during his Senate confirmation hearing that he would “remain strongly committed” to reducing and replacing animal testing.
Does anyone ever actually get punished for misleading Congress?
Documents obtained by WCW through the Freedom of Information Act show he went back on that promise within a few months. Further records obtained this year show that rabbits at the EPA are still being experimented on, denied adequate veterinary care, and needlessly killed instead of being retired.
Animal torture and deceiving Congress are bad enough, but the reasons for these experiments are what make all of this really shocking. It appears that the EPA is carrying out these experiments at the behest of over three dozen environmental and social justice groups, including the National Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense Fund, Sierra Club, Earthjustice, and the Center for Biological Diversity. The groups demanded Biden’s EPA reverse plans to eliminate animal tests and continue the practice all under the guise of “environmental justice.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The studies being done at the urging of these groups include experiments to study “adverse health effects and potentially other longer-term disease” caused by firearms emissions (obviously for the purpose of pushing gun control) and studying the physical and mental health effects of global warming and wildfires on people who eat unhealthy diets.
The condemnation of the EPA for these actions is fortunately bipartisan. A group of 37 members of Congress, led by Reps. Lisa McClain (R-MI) and Don Davis (D-NC), is demanding answers from the EPA. The public needs to demand the same.
Hannah Cox (@HannahDCox) is the president and co-founder of BASEDPolitics and a fellow for the White Coat Waste Project.