Final signature count: 16,710

16,710 signatures toward our 50,000 goal

The United States Meat Animal Research Center (USMARC) has been ignoring animal rights and welfare since its inception in 1964. Thousands of the animals housed at USMARC have died from starvation in just the last few decades alone1. Livestock at the facility have been specially bred to produce more offspring than normal, resulting in particularly weak and vulnerable progeny. Those that survive often have debilitating deformities.

Two years after the center opened, mass public outcry against animal cruelty resulted in the Animal Welfare Act, although farm animals used in research that promised to benefit agriculture remained exempt from protections2. Research facilities such as USMARC, overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), were expected to self-regulate. However, despite the Agriculture Department’s crack-downs on animal abuse at private research facilities, it allows the publicly-funded USMARC to treat animals as they see fit.

The horrific truth of USMARC’s treatment of animals first came to light in 2015. The New York Times reported indefensible acts that have taken place at MARC over the past several decades1, and prompted the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) to ask former Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack for an immediate investigation with appropriate corrective action, including possible closure of the facility3.

The AWI called on Congress to cut off the USMARC’s research funding, following the report which detailed multiple instances of direct non-compliant veterinary care and animal handling resulting in significant animal suffering4.

The inspection details incidents of animal cruelty4, including injured animals that are refused treatment, medical issues not being documented nor conveyed to an attending veterinarian, and animals in a feedlot area showing symptoms of severe heat distress.

MARC uses more than $22 million taxpayer dollars and 35,000 animals annually, in its quest to find new ways to boost livestock industry profits5. It is clear the center’s cruelty has not paid off, and its attempts to improve agriculture through experimental research have caused an industry-wide increase in death-rates among livestock.

A national poll by the taxpayer watchdog White Coat Waste Project found 68% of voters want to reduce taxpayer-funded research intended to benefit agribusiness6.

This inhumanity has been permitted for too long. Tell the USDA’s Secretary of Agriculture to end these cruel and unusual experiments. It’s time to hold the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center accountable for its inhumane practices!