EXCLUSIVE — The Department of Defense has at least $57 million in contracts involving experimentation on dogs and cats, a report from animal watchdog White Coat Waste showed.

Nearly all of the contracts are with the U.S. Army, according to the report shared with the Washington Examiner. The experimentation ranges from several drug toxicology tests on canines to noise exposure on felines.

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President Donald Trump has taken steps in both of his nonconsecutive administrations to reduce and phase out testing on animals. The EPA set deadlines in the first Trump administration to reduce animal testing 30% by 2025, and 100% by 2035. The Biden administration eliminated those deadlines.

WCW said it obtained the contracts “based on information that DOD provided to Congress last year, as well as information obtained from the DoD research spending database.”

However, it’s unclear whether the contracts are active.

The Washington Examiner reached out to The Pentagon for comment, but did not receive a response.

One experiment involves inserting micro-valves into a canine’s head to study its effect as a surgical implant to treat hydrocephalus, a condition where there is excess fluid in the brain. It is funded by the Army and the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs, a DoD program that funds biomedical research. More than $500,000 has been allocated to the contract, which is with St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center.

White Coat Waste previously revealed an experiment that stuck “marbles in the rear end of cats,” as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put it in a congressional hearing. The contract for that experiment, around $10 million, was canceled. The Navy also ended all experimentation on dogs and cats.

“This is long overdue,” Navy Secretary John Phelan said in May. “In addition to this termination, I’m directing the surgeon general of the Navy to conduct a comprehensive review of all medical research programs to ensure they align with ethical guidelines, scientific necessity, and our core values of integrity and readiness.”

WCW intends to take action on the $57 million in contracts by working with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), who has previously advocated against animal testing. The House National Defense Authorization Act, which will be marked up next week and determines the DoD’s budget, includes a section authored by Mace that will ban funds going toward dog or cat testing with exceptions granted only by waiver signed by Hegseth.

The section also exempts any “physical exam, training program, or study relating to service animals or military animals.”

“We’re leading the charge to stop Defense dollars from being spent on cruel and outdated lab experiments on dogs and cats,” Mace told the Washington Examiner. “Pets are family, not petri dishes for mad scientists.”

Testing on dogs and cats is regulated by the Animal Welfare Act. Animal testing is considered useful in lieu of human testing, which can bring legal consequences. The act excludes lab-bred birds, mice, and rats more commonly used for experiments.

One study allegedly still being funded is an experiment at the University of Missouri-Columbia “where 400 beagle puppies are being infested with ticks for painful research, including tests in which pain relief is intentionally withheld.”

“As the group that’s been exposing and ending the Pentagon’s wasteful, expensive and painful experiments on pets in the US and China, White Coat Waste applauds Rep. Nancy Mace and the House Armed Services Committee for taking decisive action to extend the Trump Pentagon’s historic cuts to deadly dog and cat testing across the entire agency,” WCW Senior Vice President Justin Goodman told the Washington Examiner.

A different experiment revealed by WCW involved 44 beagle puppies undergoing a cordectomy surgery to prevent them from barking. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said the surgery was done to destress the animals by reducing noise and also to reduce the decibel levels of noise to OSHA allowable limits to prevent hearing loss for workers. WCW obtained documents that showed the puppies were scheduled to be euthanized after the surgery.

GOP LAWMAKERS DEMAND BHATTACHARYA ENDS NIH EXPERIMENTS ON DOGS AND CATS

House Republican lawmakers sent a letter to National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya urging him to end experiments on dogs and cats at the agency earlier this week.

It came after NIH Deputy Director Nicole Kleinstreuer told NPR in June, “We have no intention of just phasing out animal studies overnight. We know that animal studies are still very important and often scientifically justified.”