Pentagon Has Spent Over $57 Million on Overseas Animal Research Since 2019, PETA Says

In December 2025, the Defense Health Agency confirmed to PETA that USAMRDC's Policy 84 had been rescinded. The Defense Health Agency's Animal Care and Use Review Office oversees all the Pentagon's animal testing abroad. Gala said that while the rescission was positive, there is still no explicit ban on such tests.

Specific funded projects detailed in the records include the Navy spending more than $389,000 on decompression sickness experiments on sheep at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The Army spent roughly $750,000 at Wayne State University in Detroit on brain damaging ferrets with a bombardment of radio waves to study Havana syndrome.

James Cook University in Australia received $600,000 to burn rats by plunging them into near-boiling water for 8 seconds, inflicting third-degree burns on more than 30% of their bodies before removing half of their livers.

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel received $300,000 to mount invasive computational systems on the heads of goldfish. The Italian Institute of Technology in Italy received $298,000 to slice up the arms of living octopuses. The University of Antofagasta in Chile received $173,000 to subject rats to highly invasive spaceflight simulations involving multiple surgeries to implant internal tracking devices and viral vectors.

The University of Alberta in Canada received $429,000 to subject dogs to procedures that cause heart disease, repeated injections and muscle deterioration. Gala said all of this fails to advance human health or military readiness.

Com reached out to the Pentagon for comment but received no response. U.S. Navy.

PETA has been an integral part of pushing reforms away from animal testing for decades. "There's still a lot more work to do," Gala said.