Florida Rep. Greg Steube has been a leader in the bipartisan effort to shut down the remnants of Dr. Anthony Facui’s taxpayer-funded animal-testing regime in the U.S.
Now, the Sarasota Republican seeks to prevent such activities overseas.
Last week, according to WWSB in Sarasota, Steube became a co-sponsor of the Cease Animal Research Grants Overseas, or CARGO, Act, which seeks to prohibit the National Institutes of Health from funding animal experiments in foreign labs.
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Per the bill, the NIH gave $2.2 billion to foreign organizations for research projects involving animals from 2011 through 2021.
Yet the NIH “does not conduct inspections of foreign organizations, and these organizations self-report information pertaining to animal welfare creating a risk that information will be misrepresented,” the bill states.
“This lack of oversight has resulted in the mistreatment of animals used in research projects performed outside the United States and funded by the American public,” the measure added.
The bill would change the language of the law so that the NIH “may not award any support (including any grant, contract, cooperative agreement, or technical assistance) for any activity or program that uses live animals for research unless the research occurs in the United States.”
“The U.S. cannot continue sending Americans’ hard-earned money overseas and not paying attention to what’s done with it,” Steube told WWSB. “The lack of oversight only leads to corruption and abuse, and the CARGO Act will put a stop to that.”
Despite the language of the CARGO Act, Steube is not exactly a fan of animal testing within the U.S. either.
As the Tampa Free Press reported in November, Stuebe has sponsored a bill to block the NIH from funding research conducted on dogs.
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The congressman has pointed out that such experiments subjected canines to literally being chewed on by sandflies, injected them with cocaine, cut their throats open to feed them infectious bacteria, drilled holes into dogs’ skulls, severed their vocal cords to silence the whining, and injected them with methamphetamines to give puppies heart attacks.
A separate bill Steube co-sponsored with Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz of South Florida would halt NIH experimentation on dogs or cats unless the agency director notifies Congress at least 30 days in advance and assures lawmakers that the research is “medically necessary” and cannot be done with alternative species or models.
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