As was true for Ridglan Farms before its recent closure, Marshall BioResources—the country’s largest breeder of dogs for research—stays in business because a market exists for its horrors. 

Because there is demand for its commodification of living beings as “products.” 

Because labs buy its trademarked dogs, cats, ferrets, and minipigs to use as experimental subjects.

Among those buyers sits the U.S. federal government—and it isn’t just one more name on Marshall’s customer list. It’s an active, driving force in Marshall’s market. 

Marshall Survives Because Labs Keep Buying

White Coat Waste (WCW) recently tied Marshall to a long list of NIH-funded experiments that victimized Marshall dogs and cats. These experiments caused animals’ hearts to fail, made them obese and diabetic, severed their spinal cords, forced them to hyperventilate, infested them with ticks and flies, cut out their brains, force-fed them experimental drugs, and more—all in the name of “science.” 

Yet, follow the money, and NIH’s fingerprints are often one step removed, making its financial investment in Marshall hard to quantify. Its connections to Marshall appear largely indirect, made through the labs to which NIH awards research grants. By NIH’s own account, 80-85% of its research budget is awarded as “extramural” grants, meaning money handed to non-NIH research institutions, which then decide for themselves how to spend it—including which vendors to buy animals from. That’s true to the arrangement WCW describes: NIH-funded laboratories at places like Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt, and University of Utah purchasing dogs and cats from Marshall. 

Purchases of Marshall animals by extramural NIH-funded laboratories don’t show up as NIH spending in federal contract data, because, legally, they aren’t federal contracts at all. Rather, they’re transactions between two non-governmental parties, made possible by federal money that already changed hands once, upstream, at the grant stage. 

The Pentagon, Not the NIH, Leads Marshall’s Direct Federal Sales

Direct government contracts don’t hide that way, and a federal spending database cited by WCW shows Marshall receiving over $5 million in direct taxpayer funding across several federal agencies. 

The agencies listed include NIH, the Department of Defense (DoD), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Food & Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and the Small Business Administration (SBA). On an accompanying chart, the Small Business Administration (SBA) tops the list, with the DoD in second.

Public loan records show that the SBA figure corresponds to a single Paycheck Protection loan Marshall received in April 2020, at the height of the pandemic-era business relief. It looks to reflect emergency payroll support, not an agency’s appetite for research animals. 

Set that loan aside, and DoD leads every other agency in the dataset by a wide margin. 

Going back to 2008, Marshall has taken in at least $2.3 million in federal dollars, with the DoD driving nearly 80% of that total.

And, unlike NIH’s, DoD’s relationship with Marshall is direct: Army-run labs are buying animals straight from Marshall under contracts issued by the Defense Health Agency (DHA).

Those Army-run labs are current customers of record and named users of Marshall’s animals. There’s no grantee institution in between. Rather, it’s the government itself sending taxpayer money directly to Marshall—and directly responsible for what happens to the animals it gets back.

That directness makes DoD’s spending easier to scrutinize than NIH’s, and leaves the government clearly exposed: this is the Pentagon, directly implicated—right now. 

Two Active Contracts Put Nearly $6 Million on the Table

Federal spending records show that DHA currently holds two active purchasing vehicles with Marshall, authorizing purchases worth almost $6 million combined:

• A contract for ferrets worth up to $3 million, running through October 2028, supplying the Army’s Combat Casualty Care Research Program (CCCRP), which researches battlefield trauma care.
• A contract for Göttingen minipigs worth $2.86 million, running through December 2029 and naming as destinations the Army’s chemical weapons and biological threat research institutes: the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense (USAMRICD) and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID).

These figures are authorized ceilings, not guaranteed payouts. But recent purchase orders show the military isn’t just holding the vehicles in reserve.

The Military Is Placing Orders for Animal Victims

Last year, in fiscal year 2025, DoD appears to have obligated more than $408,000 for Marshall’s animals—more than in any other year in its documented contract history. 

Approximately $163,000 of that total looks to have come from minipig orders placed under DHA’s Göttingen minipig vehicles, including orders tied to synthetic opioid intoxication research and something identified as the “MRPP 8131 Minipig Project.” 

So far in fiscal year 2026, seven purchase orders totaling more than $123,000 have been recorded for Marshall animals under these vehicles. 

Federal contract data specifies that this money went toward:

• “research ferrets;”
• “large animal research;”
• “items required in support of large animal scientific research;” and
• supplies “needed in support of CCCRP-funded research on synthetic opioid intoxication.”

The Animals Were Bought to Be Poisoned, Infected, Killed

USAMRICD’s and USAMRIID’s own annual reporting to USDA offers glimpses of what we can expect to befall the animals they purchase from Marshall. 

In fiscal year 2025, USAMRICD reported using 85 pigs in studies involving unrelieved pain or distress. Some pigs were exposed to nerve agents at doses referenced against LD50 values (the amount lethal to half of those animals exposed). Others were exposed to toxic gas that produced pulmonary edema, a life-threatening build-up of fluid in the lungs.

In the same year, USAMRIID reported using 13 pigs and 80 ferrets in “select agent” research, infecting them with “high hazard” bacterial or viral pathogens by injection or aerosol.

Together, the government purchase orders and annual report filings paint a picture of Marshall-bred animals being sold as taxpayer-funded stand-ins for human beings, being delivered to government laboratories, and being poisoned, infected, made to suffer, and killed.

Shutting Off the Demand Means Shutting Down the Supply

Marshall will keep breeding and selling dogs, cats, ferrets, and pigs for as long as institutions—including the U.S. federal government—keep buying them. 

We must demand that Congress stop the government from using our tax dollars to manufacture the very demand that keeps Marshall in business.

Your Call to Action: Tell Congress to pass the SPARE Act, stopping the government from forcing us to bankroll the suffering of animals trademarked and sold by Marshall. 

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About the Author: Lindsey Soffes is Head of Programs at Rise for Animals. She holds a law degree from William and Mary Law School and has spent her career advocating for the rights of all animals—both human and non-human.