Ridglan beagle rescue signals animal testing shift in America

DANE COUNTY, Wis. - One-thousand down, and 500 to go. The beagle rescue from Ridglan Farms is now ⅔ complete. But animal welfare advocates say this is just one step in a larger battle to end animal testing in America. 

Battle to end animal testing

What we know:

If your social media algorithm has recently been flooded with videos of rescued beagles, you are not alone. But Justin Goodman is not ready to celebrate. Goodman is a senior vice president of White Coat Waste Project, a D.C. watchdog group calling on the government to stop funding dog and car experiments with your money. 

"The U.S. Government is the single largest funder of animal testing in the world," Goodman said. 

When Laurie Simmons announced a deal to free 1,500 dogs from Ridglan Farms in Blue Mounds, west of Madison, the founder of Big Dog Ranch Rescue gave President Trump's health secretary a verbal pat on the back. 

"This is exactly what Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F Kennedy Jr has been advocating for his Make America Healthy Again agenda," Simmons said. 

The other side:

Goodman begs to differ. 

"This decision to release the beagles happened in spite of RFK Junior, not because of him," Goodman said. 

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In summer 2025, nine Congressional Republicans called on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to end all dog and cat experiments approved since 1984. 

In January, another Republican, Nancy Mace, urged Secretary Kennedy to prohibit any future funding. 

In April, two days before activitists classed with police, Democratic Congressman Mark Pocan of Wisconsin grilled Sec. Kennedy over funding for labs that specifically buy dogs from Ridglan. 

"You’re still giving money to groups through the NIH that are using beagles from this highly questionable farm," Pocan said.

"I believe you, but I have a hard time believing that. I need to look into this," Kennedy replied.

Kennedy assured Pocan that dog testing is largely a thing of the past. 

"We've ended most of it," Kennedy said. 

"That is an outright lie. They have not ended most of it as far as I know, they've ended none of it," Goodman said. 

Funding for testing

By the numbers:

Data obtained by White Coat Waste and provided to the FOX6 Investigators shows that in the past 14 months, NIH has approved $55 million for new dog and cat experiments. Another $87 million has been approved for more extensions to existing research. That is $142 million in grants. 

Much of that money was approved after an exchange in summer 2025 between NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya and Acting Deputy Director Nicole Kleinstreuer. 

"What should the NIH do?" asked Bhattacharya.

"Are you asking my personal opinion?" Kleinstreuer asked. 

"Yes, I'd love your personal opinion," Bhattacharya said. 

"I don't think we should do research on dogs or cats. Absolutely not. It's unconscionable," Kleinstreuer answered.

That statement underscored announcements in spring 2025 by both NIH and the Food and Drug Administration to phase out animal testing and invest in new technologies.

Actions versus words

Dig deeper:

Wayne Pacelle is President of the Center for a Humane Economy, one of the groups that paid to free the Ridglan beagles. 

"We have organs on a chip, we have organoids, we have AI," Pacelle said. "But now we need to have the actions match the rhetoric."

Instead, NIH has continued to dole out funds for dog experiments, including new toxicity testing by Isoprene Pharmaceuticals in Baltimore, and two rounds of experiments at the University of Missouri, where ticks are allowed to feed on Ridglan beagles for days until they contract dangerous and deadly diseases.

"The NIH literally gave a grant last week for a brand new five-year experimentation program on dogs," Pacelle said. 

On a recent episode of the FOX6 Investigators podcast Open Record, Paula Clifford said the concern is overblown. 

"The animals in research are okay, Clifford said. 

Clifford is with Americans for Medical Progress, a nonprofit funded in part by the biomedical research industry and which advocates for continued animal testing. 

"People really do think animals aren’t needed, and horrible things are happening to them. And that’s just not true," Clifford said. 

Clifford said research on dogs sometimes leads to medical advancements. But more importantly, she said, it ensures dangerous drugs are weeded out before they are tested on humans. 

"And it’s working. It’s truly working. The animal studies are keeping human volunteers in clinical trials safe," Clifford said. 

Of the nearly 43,000 dogs housed in U.S. laboratories in 2024, most were reported to experience minimal, if any, pain. But more than 12,000 of them were subjected to pain and distress on purpose, including 410 left to suffer without any form of relief. 

"In general, most animals are fine," Clifford said. 

"If you think that fine means keeping dogs in cages the size of microwave ovens, burning them, poisoning them with experimental drugs, infesting them with biting insects, infecting them with viruses, and letting them suffer in pain without pain relief, I think most people would contest the characterization of that as fine," Goodman said. 

"The animal testing model is a failure," Pacelle said. 

Pacelle said most of that suffering is for naught, since drugs that succeed in dogs and other animals fail in humans more than 90% of the time. 

"If you have an alternative, you have a moral duty to use the alternative," Pacelle said. 

But Goodman said if you want to know what happens next, follow the money. 

"As long as they are requiring, strongly recommending and funding dog testing, it is going to continue and someone is going to pick up the slack if and when Ridglan winds down," Goodman said. 

Pacelle said you can follow it right to upstate New York, where Marshall Bioresources has more than 16,000 beagles. That is like another Ridglan Farms times eight. 

FOX6 Investigators asked NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya for an interview. Instead, U.S. Health and Human Services staff asked if we would like to talk to Acting Deputy Director Nicole Kleinstreuer instead. We said yes, and then the department said no one was available. 

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As for Sec. Kennedy's promise to "look into" Congressman Pocan's questions about Ridglan Farms, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sent FOX6 a brief statement:
"We continue to engage with the Congressman on NIH’s efforts to reduce and ultimately replace animal testing. We remain committed to responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars and advancing more modern, humane research methods." 

Pocan's office also sent us a brief statement:
"Rep. Pocan has had conversations with high-level HHS staff about this issue and they’ve committed to looking into solutions to both revoke the facility’s ability to receive federal funding for research and to prevent this from happening again."