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

PETA sent a 24-page letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on May 6 calling for the immediate cessation of gruesome and ongoing animal testing involving more than $57 million in public funds. The Department of Defense has funneled more than $21 million into foreign animal laboratories in the last seven years.

The Pentagon has sent more than $21 million overseas since 2019 to fund experiments that burn rats, paralyze pigs, infect animals with bacteria, blind them, damage their brains and subject them to extreme trauma, according to records obtained by PETA.

U.S. Navy decompression sickness and oxygen toxicity tests on animals. U.S. Army weapon-wounding tests on dogs, cats, non-human primates, marine mammals and all other animals, as well as banning DOD-funded animal experiments at foreign institutions.

The group requested that the DOD initiate a comprehensive audit of all contracts, contract indefinite delivery vehicles (IDVs), grants, direct payments, loans and other awards. It asked the DOD to align its research, development, testing, evaluation (RDT&E) and training programs with the larger federal transition away from the use of animals in experimentation.

com that PETA began following wound labs dating back to the 1980s.

Policy 84 was implemented during Ronald Reagan's administration in the 1980s and explicitly allowed dogs, cats, monkeys and marine mammals to be inflicted with wounds from weapons. U.S. Army Medical Research & Development Command (USAMRDC) removed any mention of Policy 84 from its website.

In December 2025, the Defense Health Agency confirmed to PETA that USAMRDC's Policy 84 had been rescinded.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.