Please Ask Your State Senator to Support SB 669!

A company called Envigo operates what can only be described as a dog-breeding factory farm in Cumberland, Virginia, where thousands of beagles are bred each year for the sole purpose of being sold to laboratories for experimentation. They”re subjected to the terror of being packed and confined during days-long international transport, including to Japan and Taiwan, where animal protection laws and regulations are lax or altogether non-existent.

If passed, Senate Bill 669—introduced by Sen. Jennifer Boysko—would prohibit any person in Virginia from breeding a dog or cat for the express purpose of producing offspring for use in research, experimentation, or testing that’s not required by law . The bill would also prohibit the sale of dogs or cats from such facilities to a manufacturer, an institution of higher learning, or a testing facility inside or outside the U.S.

Most use of dogs in laboratories is elective—and only a fraction of the dogs held in laboratories are used in tests that are required by law (such as testing of new pharmaceutical drugs). Dogs have been used in painful and deadly curiosity-driven tests—including one experiment in which the corneas of dogs’ left eyes were wounded to the point of ulceration, another in which dogs were subjected to a repeated-dose oral toxicity test (which involved administering a compound three times a day for 28 days to puppies between the ages of 6 and 7 months and then killing them), and yet another in which puppies were injected with steroids, killed, and dissected.

If passed, SB 669 would put in place critical protections for dogs and cats bred and born solely to be experimented on in laboratories.

Please click on the button below to find your state senator and ask him or her to support SB 669. Here are some quick and easy talking points for your e-mail and phone call:

• As a constituent in your district, I’m asking you to protect dogs and cats by voting YES on SB 669.
• If passed, SB 669 would prohibit any person from breeding a dog or cat for the express purpose of producing offspring for use in research, experimentation, or testing that’s not required by law.
• The bill would also prohibit the sale of dogs or cats to a manufacturer, an institution of higher learning, or a testing facility inside or outside the U.S.
• Like most Americans, I consider dogs and cats to be members of the family, and I hope I can count on you as my state senator to speak up for them by voting YES on SB 669.