National Hispanic Medical Association Backs Bill to Ban Funding of Foreign Animal Experiments

For Immediate Release:
September 25, 2023

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

The National Hispanic Medical Association (NHMA), representing 50,000 licensed Hispanic physicians in the U.S., has endorsed a bipartisan bill that would bar the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from funding experiments on animals in foreign laboratories.

This bill, the Cease Animal Research Grants Overseas (CARGO) Act, was introduced by Reps. Dina Titus (D-Nev.-01) and Troy Nehls (R-Texas-22) following an 18-month investigation by PETA into U.S.-funded animal experimenters in Colombia that led to the shutdown of two laboratories.

Owl monkeys huddle together in a Colombian lab that was shut down following PETA’s investigation. Photo: PETA

The discredited Colombian labs received $17 million in American taxpayers’ money from NIH before Colombian authorities seized more than 100 monkeys and 180 mice and filed formal charges against the married couple running the facilities. Between 2011 and 2021, NIH handed out approximately $2.2 billion to 200 foreign organizations to fund 1,357 grants and contracts involving experiments on animals. NIH doesn’t inspect the foreign laboratories it funds, require local authorities to oversee them, or verify the claims made by recipients in their grant applications and progress reports. This lack of oversight results in a breeding ground for animal abuse like that in Colombia. The CARGO Act would terminate these giveaways, sparing the lives of countless animals who would have otherwise been victimized in experiments. NIH would still be able to award funds for human-relevant, superior research that doesn’t involve animals.

“PETA thanks the NHMA for taking a stand against foreign laboratories conducting cruel, pointless experiments on animals,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA urges everyone to follow the NHMA’s lead by contacting their representatives and asking them to cosponsor this lifesaving legislation.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.