PETA thanks Trump admin for ending Navy experiments on cats and dogs, calls for broader ban

The logo of the international non-governmental animal rights organisation People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) (Photo by YANN SCHREIBER/AFP via Getty Images)

OAN Staff Abril Elfi
10:25 AM – Sunday, June 1, 2025

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has thanked the Trump administration for banning Navy-funded experiments on dogs and cats.

On Thursday, PETA wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Navy Secretary John Phelan, thanking the administration for the new ban and requesting a broader ban on all animal testing in all military branches.

Phelan announced on Tuesday that all Department of the Navy testing on cats and dogs would be banned.

“This is long overdue,” Phelan said in a video posted to X. “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.”

Today it gives me great pleasure to terminate all Department of the Navy's testing on cats and dogs, ending these inhumane practices and saving taxpayer dollars. This is long overdue. I commend @POTUS, @SecDef and @DOGE for bringing this to light. pic.twitter.com/joKRfuNbF4
— Secretary of the Navy John C. Phelan (@SECNAV) May 27, 2025

PETA reported that the Navy has “wasted more than $5.1 million in federal funding since 2020 for decompression sickness and oxygen toxicity tests” at universities around the country, using pigs, rodents, and other animals.

The organization went on to ask that the administration also conduct a similar comprehensive, agency-wide audit aimed at rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in cruel and outdated animal experimentation.

PETA asked the Department of Defense (DOD) to restrict the use of animals in Navy decompression sickness and oxygen toxicity testing, as well as dogs, cats, nonhuman primates, marine animals, and other animals now used in Army weapon-wounding tests.

Weapon-wounding tests, which were banned during the Reagan administration, were reintroduced in 2020 when the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC) issued a policy allowing the purchase of “dogs, cats, nonhuman primates, or marine mammals to inflict wounds upon using a weapon for the purpose of conducting medical research, development, testing, or evaluation.”

In 2023, the Army, with the aid of PETA, terminated $750,000 in government funding for a brain-damaging weapon-wounding experiment on ferrets at Wayne State University in Michigan.

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