I could cry! The Washington Times just reported:
“EPA CHIEF ORDERS LAST-MINUTE PARDON TO AGENCY’S RESEARCH RABBITS”
BREAKING VICTORY: White Coat Waste Project just made the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) retire its lab survivors!
We did it! It’s the first major win of 2021!
Learn more: http://bit.ly/3iFuRzR
Hours before the Inauguration, outgoing Administrator Andrew Wheeler committed to retiring the bunny survivors still trapped at EPA’s taxpayer-funded labs.
Here's how your petitions, calls, and donations to WCW made this happen:
- First, our investigators exposed how the EPA was wasting taxpayer money to test on 20,000 animals a year. Even I was shocked — but not surprised — by the bizarre experiment details uncovered in our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) investigation.
You have to see it to believe it. - Then, our policy team worked with Congress and EPA leadership to defund the agency’s ENTIRE animal testing program.
- Finally, we met with Mr. Wheeler at EPA headquarters to retire the survivors. As you know, most government labs don’t let taxpayers adopt healthy survivors… taxpayer-funded white coats just kill them instead.
But you signed our petitions. You donated to WCW. And we delivered another win!
Today’s big win follows our #GiveThemBack campaign to retire and release lab survivors across the federal government:
- WCW already made the Food and Drug Administration enact its first-ever adoption policy.
- WCW did it at the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, too.
- Ditto at the National Institutes of Health.
Bottom line: taxpayers “bought them” ... now we’ve made EPA #GiveThemBack!
And this isn’t the first time our “FOIA to Freedom” strategy has paid handsome dividends:
- After WCW’s FOIA investigation, the FDA ended its $5.5 million baby monkey nicotine addiction lab — and retired the survivors to a sanctuary for the rest of their lives.
- Following WCW’s FOIA investigation, the USDA ended its $22 million “Kitten Slaughterhouse,” the fed’s #1 taxpayer-funded cat lab — and adopted out the survivors to a loving home.
Check out our new blog post to learn how you made it all happen. Then send a tweet of thanks to Greenbaum Policy Pioneer award winner Andrew Wheeler.
Thank Andrew Wheeler: https://ctt.ac/41Ffq
This HUGE win wouldn’t have happened without your advocacy and donations.
You give. WCW wins. They survive... that’s our promise.
So on behalf of the EPA’s bunny survivors and the entire WCW team, thank you, for your continued support.
Because taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to pay $20 billion+ for wasteful government animal experiments,
Arin Greenwood
Communications Director
White Coat Waste Project