Ridglan Farms — a Wisconsin-based animal research facility and dog breeder under state investigation for animal cruelty — has, since 1966, proudly bred and sold an untold number of dogs to laboratories across the United States. 

During these more than 50 years, Ridglan Farms has operated largely behind the industry curtain. Recently, that curtain has finally started to lift.  

Now, thanks to government records newly obtained by Rise for Animals and The Marty Project, we can see more of what Ridglan has been doing, and with whom.

Previously, FOX6 exposed Ridglan’s buyers from 2019-2020. Our exclusive records — received directly from the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection (DATCP) and the Illinois Department of Agriculture — bring that story into the present. 

Here’s what they reveal:

➡ Between January 2022 and mid-2025, Ridglan sold more than 6,800 dogs — identified on official forms as “ANIMALS FOR RESEARCH” — to dozens of laboratories around the country.

That’s more than 6,800 individuals reduced to an ID code, sold for profit, boxed like merchandise, and shipped to labs where many would be subjected to painful testing, then killed. (And, this number doesn’t even account for the dogs Ridglan keeps and uses in its own on-site experiments.)

➡ Some puppies were just weeks old. In multiple documents, Ridglan labeled them “TO [sic] YOUNG” for even standard pre-travel vaccinations, yet still shipped off to be used as test subjects.

➡ Ridglan’s documented customers span sectors — private, academic, nonprofit — and include some of the biggest and most infamous names in the animal research world: Labcorp, Elanco, Boehringer Ingelheim-Merial, Inotiv & Envigo, and the Lovelace Institute.

Oh, and of course, Craig Reinemeyer’s East Tennessee Clinical Research, among both Ridglan’s most consistent and ostensibly proudest customers.

➡ Ridglan’s sales appear to be declining, trending down every year since at least 2022.

In the first half of 2025, Ridglan documented the sale of approximately 760 dogs. If Ridglan follows the same annual patterns documented between 2022 and 2024 (during which years more than half of its annual sales were executed in the first two quarters), Ridglan may sell fewer than 1,500 dogs this year.

Rise for Animals and The Marty Project are working to secure additional records to help determine whether this decline stems from a reduced demand for dogs in research or simply a shift in sourcing as labs attempt to distance themselves from Ridglan’s increasingly public troubles. (Stay tuned!)

These records tell us a lot about Ridglan, but they reveal even more about the broader industry.

Ridglan stays in business because there is demand for its “products”: sentient beings raised, packaged, and sold as raw material for experimentation. 

That demand is sustained by other animal research industry actors, funded in part with our taxpayer dollars, and built on lies. 

Ridglan is not a rogue operation. It’s a case study.

Just like Envigo.
Just like Marshall Farms.
Just like the National Primate Research Centers.
Just like Alpha Genesis.
Just like Oregon Health and Science University.
Just like the labs exposed in Inside the Bunker.

Ridglan survives not in isolation, but through its deep entanglement with a powerful network designed to obscure violence, normalize suffering, and deflect accountability.  

To help illustrate this, Rise for Animals and The Marty Project will be releasing an interactive map documenting every confirmed shipment of dogs from Ridglan Farms to its buyers between 2022 and the first half of 2025. Each point marks a customer, and each arc traces a dog’s final journey — from a rural warehouse in Wisconsin to a cage inside a laboratory. 

Each shipment record is also publicly accessible via ARLO, Rise’s open source transparency platform.

Make no mistake: Ridglan’s story is horrifying on its own, and it demands immediate attention, accountability, and action. But what makes this story even more urgent is what Ridglan reveals about the broader industry that it serves — one that exists to treat animals as disposable supplies, label their suffering as “science”, and profit from their pain.

This is why transparency matters so much.

Naming Ridglan’s buyers isn’t about shaming a few labs. It’s about exposing a system. It’s about challenging what that system has built. And it’s about demanding an end to all of it.

The very same network that keeps Ridglan alive is the one that sustains the entire animal research industry. And, now, finally, that network is being dragged into the light.

Please, help us drag it further.

📣 Your call to action: Share this exposé on social media to help spread the truth far and wide. Awareness is imperative to fueling change. Share on X or Bluesky now. Or copy, paste, and share the following link on Facebook or anywhere else: riseforanimals.org/news/ridglan-clients

✉️ Want to do even more? Tell your U.S. members of Congress to stop funding animal experimentation with our federal tax dollars. Urge them to support the SPARE Act now.

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