Published September 17, 2026
By PETA Staff
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is intensifying its pressure on federal leadership, calling on Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to intervene and halt what the organization describes as significant waste, fraud, and abuse within the Department of War. According to recent findings publicized by the animal rights organization, the Pentagon has squandered more than $35 million since 2019 by bankrolling invasive, cruel, and often fatal experiments on animals conducted in laboratories located outside the United States.
The campaign targets a wide array of foreign testing practices funded by American taxpayers. Documentation obtained by the organization reveals that experimenters in international facilities subject animals to extreme trauma, including scalding rats in near-boiling water, intentionally sickening dogs, mutilating mini-pigs, slicing open octopuses, and intentionally blinding living creatures. PETA argues that these practices are not only profoundly unethical but also represent a wasteful allocation of defense spending that yields questionable scientific value for modern military readiness or human medicine.
PETA Demands End to U.S.-Funded Mouse Strangulation Experiment Attempting to Study ‘Intimate Partner Violence’ in Canada
As part of its ongoing campaign, PETA formally submitted a detailed letter to the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering on September 17, 2026. The correspondence urges the Department of War to immediately terminate more than $21 million in funding directed toward various controversial tests on animals across Canada.
Among the specific projects highlighted in the latest correspondence is a federally funded study taking place at the University of British Columbia. In this laboratory setting, an experimenter subjects mice to severe physical trauma, including strangulation, oxygen deprivation, and induced brain injuries. According to project outlines, these procedures are executed in purported attempts to simulate the complex dynamics and physiological impacts of "intimate partner violence" in humans.
The Pentagon’s financial backing extends to several other Canadian research initiatives where investigators routinely slice open animals, induce traumatic brain injuries, drastically restrict oxygen flow, and compromise visual systems. PETA’s disclosure brings renewed scrutiny to how defense research grants are reviewed, distributed, and monitored when awarded to foreign academic and research institutions.
The specific apparatus used in the University of British Columbia experiments has drawn sharp criticism from animal welfare advocates and scientific critics alike. The procedure relies on a specialized restraining device developed in the laboratory of researcher Cheryl Wellington. Within this apparatus, an air-powered metal piston rapidly and forcefully strikes the skull of a living mouse, causing the animal’s head to whip backward and violently rotate.
Wellington’s laboratory has adapted this mechanism, known as the Closed-Head Impact Model of Engineered Rotational Acceleration (CHIMERA), to model traumatic brain injury linked to domestic abuse. The protocol further involves procedures designed to compress the blood vessels and airways in the necks of the animals in a crude attempt to replicate nonfatal strangulation.
Critics and animal behavior experts argue that subjecting small rodents to blunt-force head impacts and strangulation-like procedures fundamentally fails to reproduce the intricate physiological, psychological, and social realities faced by human survivors of domestic violence. Because of these stark biological and circumstantial differences, the scientific relevance and translational value of these federally funded tests remain highly questionable, according to PETA’s analysis.
PETA Exposes Cruel U.S. Military-Funded Experiments on Animals Abroad
The September appeal builds upon a broader investigation and advocacy push launched earlier in the year. On May 6, 2026, PETA initially petitioned Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, demanding immediate action to curb what it termed the misuse of public funds for overseas animal testing.
In that earlier communication, the organization detailed how the U.S. military has historically routed millions of dollars to foreign laboratories where animals are subjected to burning, poisoning, paralysis, and severe mutilation. PETA representatives have consistently characterized these tests as both cruel and fundamentally pointless in advancing contemporary defense capabilities.
In light of these findings, the organization is mobilizing public support, urging citizens to petition the Pentagon directly. The advocacy campaign calls on military leadership to permanently phase out all overseas animal experimentation and redirect those financial resources toward modern, state-of-the-art research methodologies. Proponents of this shift emphasize that human-relevant technologies—such as advanced computer modeling, human cell-based assays, and clinical studies—offer far more accurate and reliable data for addressing human health and safety challenges than animal models ever could.
