Supporting the Cease Animal Research Grants Overseas Act of 2025

SUMMARY

The Animal Law Committee (Martha Golar and Sherry Ramsey, Co-Chairs) issued a report supporting H.R. 1085 (Rep. Nehls) / S.1802 (Sen. Scott), the Cease Animal Research Grants Overseas Act of 2025 (CARGO Act). The bipartisan legislation would amend the Public Health Service Act to prohibit the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from funding research involving live animals unless conducted in the United States.

The report argues that NIH has spent billions of taxpayer dollars on foreign animal research without meaningful oversight, relying primarily on self-reporting from dozens of facilities in more than 40 countries rather than on-site inspections. According to the report, this lack of oversight has resulted in misuse of funds and documented instances of animal mistreatment. By contrast, domestic research facilities are subject to routine inspections by the U.S. Department of Agriculture under the Animal Welfare Act, creating what the report describes as an arbitrary “two-tiered” system of animal welfare enforcement.

The report further asserts that the CARGO Act would restore compliance with existing federal law by ensuring that NIH-funded animal research is conducted only in facilities subject to U.S. animal welfare oversight and by closing loopholes that allow these protections to be circumvented abroad. It also argues that the absence of verification of foreign research is arbitrary and capricious under administrative law and constitutes a waste of taxpayer funds, citing scientific critiques of the predictive value of animal testing as well as documented cases of severe animal abuse in some NIH-funded foreign laboratories. For these reasons, the Animal Law Committee concludes that the CARGO Act would protect both taxpayer interests and animal welfare and supports the legislation.

BILL INFORMATION

H.R. 1085 (Rep. Nehls) / S.1802 (Sen. Scott)- AN ACT to amend the Public Health Service Act to prohibit the National Institutes of Health (“NIH”) from awarding any support for an activity or program that uses live animals in research unless the research occurs in the United States, and for other purposes (2025-2026)

REPORT

REPORT ON LEGISLATION
BY THE ANIMAL LAW COMMITTEE

H.R. 1085 (Rep. Nehls)

S.1802 (Sen. Scott)

AN ACT to amend the Public Health Service Act to prohibit the National Institutes of Health (“NIH”) from awarding any support for an activity or program that uses live animals in research unless the research occurs in the United States, and for other purposes.

Cease Animal Research Grants Overseas Act of 2025 (CARGO ACT)

THIS LEGISLATION IS APPROVED

I. SUMMARY OF PROPOSED LEGISLATION

The CARGO Act was originally introduced in 2023 by Congressional representatives Dina Titus (D-NV-01) and Troy Nehls (R-TX-22) in the House of Representatives.[1] It was reintroduced in the House in 2025 and introduced for the first time in the Senate in 2025 by Senators Rick Scott (R-FL) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) with continued bipartisan support.[2]

The CARGO Act stems from troubling findings regarding NIH’s lack of oversight of foreign animal research facilities which receive federal funding. Congress found that from fiscal year 2011 to fiscal year 2021, the NIH provided approximately $2.2 billion to approximately 200 foreign organizations operating in 45 countries, including China, Russia, and Colombia, for research projects involving animals.[3] However, despite this substantial taxpayer investment, the NIH does not conduct inspections of these organizations and instead relies exclusively on often inaccurate self-reporting from said organizations. This lack of oversight has resulted in both the misuse of federal funds and the abuse and mistreatment of animals used in federally funded research projects performed outside the United States.[4]

In stark contrast, the United States Department of Agriculture (“USDA”) Animal Care Inspectors may conduct routine, unannounced inspections of all entities licensed or registered under the Animal Welfare Act (“AWA”) within the United States.[5] The NIH has no comparable oversight for foreign facilities and relies entirely on self-reporting. This disparity creates an arbitrary two-tiered system that lacks rational justification.[6]

This legislation emerged following an 18-month investigation by the animal welfare organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (“PETA”) which led to the shutdown of two Colombian laboratories due to egregious animal welfare violations.[7] The investigation revealed systemic failures in NIH’s foreign funding oversight and documented severe animal abuse that continued even after being reported to NIH.

II. ANALYSIS

A. The CARGO Act Ensures Compliance with Existing AWA Requirements and Would Remedy NIH’s Current Ongoing Violation of Federal Law

Congress enacted the AWA in 1966, Pub. L. No. 89-544, 80 Stat. 350 (codified as amended at 7 U.S.C. § 2131 et seq.), which establishes clear and mandatory guidelines for the oversight of federally funded animal research, including:

• The requirement that research facilities “shall be inspected by the Secretary at least once each year”;[8]
• The requirement to maintain Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (“IACUCs”) to review all animal experiments;[9] and
• The Congressional finding that animals in research must “be provided humane care and treatment”.[10]

The NIH is currently able to circumvent these mandatory statutory requirements when funding foreign laboratories that are exempt from AWA inspections, IACUC oversight, and welfare verification standards. This creates an unlawful system in which domestic facilities must comply with federal law, while foreign facilities receiving the same taxpayer funding can operate without any oversight whatsoever.

The D.C. Circuit has expressly held that federal agencies have a “mandatory duty” to ensure AWA compliance and cannot ignore statutory requirements.[11] Yet NIH’s current funding practices do precisely what the Espy court forbids: they circumvent these mandatory statutory protections established by Congress.

The CARGO Act would restore legal compliance by ensuring all NIH-funded foreign animal research occurs in facilities that are also subject to existing AWA oversight requirements and closing the loophole that currently allows NIH to circumvent the animal welfare protections Congress already established.

B. Lack of Verification and Oversight for Overseas Laboratories Constitutes Arbitrary and Capricious Agency Action

NIH’s practice of funding foreign animal research laboratories without regulation or oversight while maintaining strict standards for domestic laboratories violates the Administrative Procedure Act’s prohibition against arbitrary and capricious agency action.[12]

Federal agencies must demonstrate a “rational connection between the facts found and the choice made.”[13] NIH’s disparate treatment of domestic versus foreign research facilities creates an arbitrary classification without any rational justification, especially given that:

• NIH does not take adequate steps to ascertain the reliability of foreign facility reporting;[14]
• There is no legitimate scientific, administrative, or policy rationale for exempting foreign facilities from the same oversight requirements imposed on domestic facilities; and
• The same ethical obligations and taxpayer interests should apply regardless of geographic location.

The Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) has confirmed that NIH has no current mechanisms to verify foreign facility compliance, noting that the agency has no “reasonable assurance that this information presents an accurate and complete record of the facilities’ care and use of laboratory animals.”[15] This discrepancy renders NIH’s continued funding of unmonitored foreign facilities arbitrary under the State Farm court findings.

C. Congress Has Constitutional Authority and Duty to Prevent Waste of Taxpayer Funds

Under Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution and the Spending Clause, Congress has both the power and the duty to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse of public funds through reasonable oversight requirements.[16]The GAO specifically found that NIH spent $2.2 billion on foreign animal research facilities from 2011 to 2021 without adequate verification or oversight, explicitly noting that NIH “lacks reasonable assurance that this information presents an accurate and complete record of the facilities’ care and use of laboratory animals.”[17]This creates substantial risk of waste and misuse of taxpayer funds and also forces American taxpayers to be unwitting participants in animal cruelty abroad.

The Spending Clause grants Congress broad authority to attach conditions to federal funding as long as they are reasonable and serve legitimate governmental interests.[18] Furthermore, the Inspector General Act of 1978 (5 U.S.C. App. 3) establishes comprehensive oversight mechanisms which are specifically designed to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse in federal programs.[19]

D. NIH Undermines Congress’s Ethical Mandate and Facilitates Animal Cruelty

By funding foreign facilities that operate outside AWA protections, NIH directly undermines Congress’s mandate to ensure humane treatment of animals in federally funded research. American tax dollars have funded documented cases of severe animal abuse, including:

Russian Laboratories: Documented procedures include removing portions of cats’ brains, implanting electrodes onto their spines, and forcing them to walk on treadmills.[20]

Chinese Laboratories: NIH has banned six Chinese laboratories since January 2025, including one that conducted “grisly experiments on beagles” with U.S. taxpayer funding.[21]

Colombian Laboratory Scandal – Caucaseco Scientific Research Center: At this facility, monkeys were “deliberately infected with malaria,” had their “spleens surgically removed,” and were “left to die from infected wounds”; animals were kept “in rusty cages amid their own waste in makeshift pens made of backyard fencing and plastic sheets”; and mice were “starved to the point of cannibalism.” Most troublingly, NIH continued funding even after abuse was documented and invited the laboratory to relocate and continue receiving grants. As a result, Colombian authorities filed criminal charges, seized over 100 monkeys and 180 mice, and shut down the facility.[22]

These are not isolated incidents, but rather foreseeable consequences of a system that operates without oversight or accountability. Leading animal law scholars have documented fundamental, systemic failures in AWA enforcement and oversight. Multiple USDA Office of Inspector General reports spanning decades—in 1995, 2005, and 2015—have consistently found that USDA-APHIS penalties for AWA violations are drastically reduced and essentially self-negotiated.[23] The USDA’s Inspector General found that “specifically in cases involving animal deaths and other egregious violations, not just run-of-the-mill violations but the worst, the USDA was discounting penalties by 86% on average,” resulting in penalties being treated as a “‘cost of business’ rather than meaningful enforcement.”[24] Even more troubling, as the 1995 OIG report documented, “APHIS cannot assess monetary penalties for violations unless the violator agrees to pay them,”[25] meaning violators effectively negotiate their own penalties. Furthermore, APHIS also cannot revoke registrations or suspend operators “without a lengthy administrative hearing process, which can be prolonged for up to three years, during which the operator can continue to commit the violations for which the facility was cited.”[26]

As Delcianna Winders and Varu Chilakamarri document in their seminal article, “the USDA’s current Animal Welfare Act (AWA) enforcement approach relies too heavily on warnings and on discounted penalties.”[27]Research demonstrates that “almost 40% of those who receive warnings went on to be cited for six or more violations,”[28] demonstrating that the current system fails to ensure compliance even within domestic facilities subject to inspection. If domestic enforcement is this inadequate despite mandatory inspections, the complete absence of oversight for foreign facilities creates a much larger risk of systemic abuse.

The inefficiency in domestic oversight has become even more dire as of January 24, 2025, when USDA Inspector General Phyllis Fong—whose office produced the audits documenting the AWA enforcement failures—was among 17 inspectors general fired by President Trump.[29] A federal judge subsequently ruled the firings unlawful, but declined to reinstate the inspectors general.[30] The USDA is now operating without the independent oversight that exposed these systemic problems, further undermining an already inadequate enforcement system.

E. Animal Experiments Funded Abroad Represent Scientific and Fiscal Waste

The problems with NIH’s animal research funding extend beyond legal non-compliance and lack of oversight in foreign labs. The experiments themselves often represent poor science and fiscal waste. Elizabeth Baker, Esq., Director of Research Policy for the Physicians Committee, testified before the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee that animal experiments “likely cost taxpayers billions a year, harm millions of animals, and do little to advance our understanding of human health.”[31]

Federal agencies themselves acknowledge these failures. In its 2016-2020 Strategic Plan, NIH stated that “animal models often fail to provide good ways to mimic disease or predict how drugs will work in humans, resulting in much wasted time and money while patients wait for therapies.”[32] The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) admits that “animal models have limited relevance to humans and poorly predict effects in humans.”[33] Notably, NIH’s own Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) stated in October 2024 that “the failure to accurately predict drug effects, and the current approach which uses animals for these predictions, is a huge bottleneck in drug development.”[34]

The scientific community also has increasingly documented animal testing’s fundamental unreliability. A peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that “a review of 221 animal experiments found agreement in human studies just 50% of the time—essentially randomly”,[35] making the odds of animal tests accurately predicting human outcomes the same odds as flipping a coin. This same study revealed that only 37% of animal research findings were ever replicated in humans, while approximately 20% were directly contradicted.[36] Even within the same species, results prove inconsistent: toxicity testing results were repeatable only 70% of the time when conducted on the same species, and about 26% of chemicals showed contradictory results upon repeat testing.[37]

These failures translate into exorbitant financial waste with little to show for it. NIH and other agencies report that 95% of drugs that are safe and effective in animal tests fail in clinical trials because they don’t work or are dangerous in humans.[38] The NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences has acknowledged that 90-95% of drugs entering clinical trials fail despite passing animal tests.[39] Despite NIH’s budget doubling two decades ago and the huge rise in animal testing, U.S. life expectancy has barely changed, demonstrating a staggeringly ineffective return on investment for taxpayers.[40]

Industry leaders and drug developers have reached similar conclusions. Dr. Pascal Descaurges, founder of biotechnology company Genoskin, asserts the inaccuracy of animal testing when applied to humans, which stems from fundamental biological differences, and concludes that the best way to get human data is from humans.[41] Still, NIH reports that nearly half of all taxpayer-funded projects it funds involve animal testing, and as many as 70% of projects funded by some agency divisions use animals.[42]

These concerns about wasteful animal testing are not new. Since its founding in 1980, PETA has sought to end animal research[43] and for decades exposed cruelty in laboratories, filed complaints, enlisted Congressional support, organized demonstrations, and launched advocacy campaigns.[44] After decades of pressure from PETA and other advocates, NIH announced in May 2025 that the agency will prioritize state-of-the-art, non-animal research.[45] In 2016, the White Coat Waste Project, founded by former PETA investigator Justin Goodman, introduced a strategic bipartisan approach, forming an “unlikely coalition of fiscal conservatives and liberal activists” which depicted animal studies as “another example of big government spending run amok”[46]. This approach proved effective given the administration’s stated focus on eliminating government waste. This decades-long advocacy effort, combined with increasing scientific evidence of animal testing’s ineffectiveness, has seemingly created momentum for reform.

The case for ending NIH funding of foreign animal experiments becomes even more urgent when considered alongside ongoing efforts by research lobbyists to secure taxpayer funding to expand domestic primate breeding programs, which would perpetuate the same wasteful and cruel experiments both domestically and abroad.[47]

III. CONCLUSION

The CARGO Act would serve as a corrective legislation that would restore NIH’s compliance with existing federal law, eliminate arbitrary disparate treatment between domestic and foreign research facilities, fulfill Congress’s constitutional obligation to prevent waste of taxpayer funds, and honor Congress’s explicit ethical mandate and purpose of ensuring humane treatment of animals in federally funded research. We note that the CARGO Act does not address the criticized, ongoing enforcement practice at the federal agency level of relying too heavily on warnings and discounted penalties, described herein.

For the reasons stated in this report, the New York City Bar Association’s Animal Law Committee supports the proposed legislation.

Animal Law Committee
Martha Golar, Co-Chair
Sherry Ramsey, Co-Chair

January 2026