
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will no longer conduct a controversial experiment that led to the deaths of thousands of cats beginning in 1982, NBC News reported.
The USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) announced Tuesday that it was stopping an experiment that used cats to study the parasite Toxoplasma gondii. Its announcement comes weeks after a report from the White Coat Waste Project detailed experiments in which the USDA had bought unwanted cats and dogs from Asia, Africa and Latin America, killed them, and fed them to laboratory cats and other animals.
"We are elated that after a year of campaigning we have relegated the slaughter of kittens to the litter box of history," White Coat Waste Project Vice President Justin Goodman told NPR.
🎉 VICTORY 🎉 After an intensive year-long campaign, we just got the @USDA to stop all cat & kitten testing & adopt o… https://t.co/eORvnpDuaQ— White Coat Waste Project (@White Coat Waste Project)1554245120.0
The USDA ARS said that it would no longer use cats for any research and adopt out the 14 cats remaining at its laboratories. Since no other USDA department conducts experiments on cats, that means cat testing at the USDA is officially over, Goodman told the Huffington Post via email.
Outcry over the experiments first erupted in 2018, when the White Coat Waste Project revealed the details of the parasite experiments that had been conducted since 1982. As the White Coat Waste Project summarized in the 2019 report:
The currently approved protocol for this project calls for up to 100 kittens to be bred each year at ARS's Animal Parasitic Disease Laboratory (APDL) in Beltsville, Maryland. At eight weeks old, the kittens are fed raw meat infected with the Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) parasite, and their feces is collected for up to 3 weeks so experimenters can harvest oocysts (eggs) for use in food safety experiments. These healthy kittens — who briefly pass the parasite's eggs and become immune within weeks — are then killed and incinerated by USDA because they are no longer useful.
The White Coat Waste Project said the experiments had cost the lives of more than 3,000 cats and $22.5 million in tax payer funds. The 2018 report led both the House and Senate to introduce bi-partisan legislation to stop the killings.
"The USDA made the right decision today, and I applaud them for their willingness to change course," Democratic Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, who introduced the Senate version of the bill, said in a statement reported by NPR. "It's a good day for our four-legged friends across America."
Today is a good day for our four-legged friends across America! After recent action from our bipartisan #KITTENAct… https://t.co/145lHi2nK2— Senator Jeff Merkley (@Senator Jeff Merkley)1554219896.0
The ARS had been conducting the experiments because the parasite causes toxoplasmosis, a major cause of death from foodborne illness in the U.S. Cats are the only host animal in which the parasite can complete its life cycle and produce eggs. However, ARS said in its statement that its researchers had achieved their objectives from the experiments. They had not infected any cats with the parasite since September 2018.
"We are continually assessing our research and priorities and aligning our resources to the problems of highest national priority. We are excited for the next chapter of work for these scientists and this laboratory," ARS Administrator Dr. Chavonda Jacobs-Young said in the statement.
Congress Must Stop #USDA’s Animal Experiments, Says #Whistleblower https://t.co/ovYmSIDdVt @World_Wildlife @AnimalPlanet— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)1549238430.0
- Redwoods are the world's tallest trees.
- Now scientists have discovered they are even bigger than we thought.
- Using laser technology they map the 80-meter giants.
- Trees are a key plank in the fight against climate change.
They are among the largest trees in the world, descendants of forests where dinosaurs roamed.
Pixabay / Simi Luft
<p><span>Until recently, measuring these trees meant scaling their 80 meter high trunks with a tape measure. Now, a team of scientists from University College London and the University of Maryland uses advanced laser scanning, to create 3D maps and calculate the total mass.</span></p><p>The results are striking: suggesting the trees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">may be as much as 30% larger than earlier measurements suggested.</a> Part of that could be due to the additional trunks the Redwoods can grow as they age, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a process known as reiteration</a>.</p>New 3D measurements of large redwood trees for biomass and structure. Nature / UCL
<p>Measuring the trees more accurately is important because carbon capture will probably play a key role in the battle against climate change. Forest <a href="https://www.wri.org/blog/2020/09/carbon-sequestration-natural-forest-regrowth" target="_blank">growth could absorb billions of tons</a> of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.</p><p>"The importance of big trees is widely-recognised in terms of carbon storage, demographics and impact on their surrounding ecosystems," the authors wrote<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank"> in the journal Nature</a>. "Unfortunately the importance of big trees is in direct proportion to the difficulty of measuring them."</p><p>Redwoods are so long lived because of their ability to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cope with climate change, resist disease and even survive fire damage</a>, the scientists say. Almost a fifth of their volume may be bark, which helps protect them.</p>Carbon Capture Champions
<p><span>Earlier research by scientists at Humboldt University and the University of Washington found that </span><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112716302584" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Redwood forests store almost 2,600 tonnes of carbon per hectare</a><span>, their bark alone containing more carbon than any other neighboring species.</span></p><p>While the importance of trees in fighting climate change is widely accepted, not all species enjoy the same protection as California's coastal Redwoods. In 2019 the world lost the equivalent of <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation-and-forest-degradation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">30 soccer fields of forest cover every minute</a>, due to agricultural expansion, logging and fires, according to The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF).</p>Pixabay
<p>Although <a href="https://c402277.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/publications/1420/files/original/Deforestation_fronts_-_drivers_and_responses_in_a_changing_world_-_full_report_%281%29.pdf?1610810475" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the rate of loss is reported to have slowed in recent years</a>, reforesting the world to help stem climate change is a massive task.</p><p><span>That's why the World Economic Forum launched the Trillion Trees Challenge (</span><a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a><span>) and is engaging organizations and individuals across the globe through its </span><a href="https://uplink.weforum.org/uplink/s/uplink-issue/a002o00000vOf09AAC/trillion-trees" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Uplink innovation crowdsourcing platform</a><span> to support the project.</span></p><p>That's backed up by research led by ETH Zurich/Crowther Lab showing there's potential to restore tree coverage across 2.2 billion acres of degraded land.</p><p>"Forests are critical to the health of the planet," according to <a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a>. "They sequester carbon, regulate global temperatures and freshwater flows, recharge groundwater, anchor fertile soil and act as flood barriers."</p><p><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor">Reposted with permission from the </em><span><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor"><a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/03/redwoods-store-more-co2-and-are-more-enormous-than-we-thought/" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>.</em></span></p>EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
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