They are caged. Isolated. Robbed of free will. Exploited and harmed to satisfy the curiosities and ambitions of people in lab coats.
They are living beings who are regarded and treated as tools. Their lives are reduced to data. The vast majority of them are killed, never having been outside of their laboratory prisons.
But now, finally, you can look upon some of their faces.
Below are new photos captured by USDA inspectors in U.S. animal labs. These images were recently released to us in fulfillment of our request for records.
We don’t know the animals’ names or where they came from. We don’t know where in the U.S. these labs are. We don’t know what experiments these animals have had to endure.
Because the government didn’t tell us. And they don’t make it easy to find out.
In response to our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the USDA sent us these photos without any corresponding explanations or context. And so we have just pictures — a haunting visual trail of suffering and institutional secrecy.
This is what animal research really looks like.
Most of the time, the public hears about animal research only in the abstract — as numbers in a chart or subjects in a “necessary” experiment. We’re assured it’s humane, or even ethical. Regulated. Scientific.
These images say otherwise.
Tiny, barren cages. Rust and filth. Visible injuries.
These are not snapshots of progress. They are evidence of a system built on silence and profiting off suffering.
Animals in labs never consented to be used and abused this way. We owe them more than our horror. We owe them our action.
Your call to action: Demand transparency of government-funded animal laboratories. Urge your U.S. members of Congress to support the Federal Animal Research Accountability Act of 2025 (H.R. 3295). This bill aims to finally force the NIH to collect the number of animals bred, used, and killed by NIH-funded labs — and to make that data public.
Transparency fuels awareness. Awareness fuels change. Let’s throw the cage doors open.
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