Historic transport of approximately 4,000 beagles spared from animal testing

Update:

On July 21, 2022, the HSUS Animal Rescue Team started removing the nearly 4,000 beagles from the mass breeding facility and transporting them to shelter and rescue partners across the country. As of Labor Day weekend, all 4,000 were on their way to loving homes! Thank you to everyone who supported this effort. The Humane Society of the United States is no longer fundraising for the rescue and transportation of the 4000 beagles. The Animal Rescue Team and donations are always needed for extraordinary events like the beagles, natural disasters, hoarding and cruelty cases that require their immediate response.

The Humane Society of the United States Animal Rescue Team was approached by the U.S. Department of Justice to remove roughly 4,000 beagles from a breeding facility that supplied laboratories that test on animals. HSUS will coordinate the placement of these dogs with our shelter partners to ultimately find them loving homes.

This removal of the beagles comes as a result of a lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice in May that described shocking violations of the Animal Welfare Act at the breeding facility, owned by a company called Envigo. Government inspectors found that beagles there were being killed instead of receiving veterinary treatment for easily treated conditions; nursing mother beagles were denied food; the food that they did receive contained maggots, mold and feces; and over an eight-week period, 25 beagle puppies died from cold exposure. Other dogs suffered from injuries when they were attacked by other dogs in overcrowded conditions.

Finding partners who can make space and find homes for around 4,000 dogs in the summer—a time of year when animal shelters already are over-capacity—will be a feat of epic proportions. We are ready to take on the challenge and are grateful to our rescue and shelter partners—a network of local rescue groups and shelters in communities throughout the country—whose dedicated efforts will make it possible for these dogs to find loving homes.

While our Animal Rescue Team works to provide immediate relief to these roughly 4,000 dogs, others in our organization are working to prevent suffering for animals through legislative, regulatory and corporate efforts, as well as public education. In that vein, our campaign to end the use of animals in laboratory testing is one of our top priorities. We work with policymakers and those within the biomedical industry to replace inhumane and unreliable animal tests with more innovative, advanced and reliable non-animal methods. 

We will not stop fighting for better approaches in research and testing to address the suffering of hundreds of thousands of animals—including dogs, primates, pigs, mice and rats—who are in laboratories and the breeding facilities that supply them right now, and the millions who suffer every year. We are urging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and pharmaceutical industry to accelerate changes to ultimately replace outdated animal tests with superior modern technologies. You can add your voice to our calls for action.