͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ​[link removed] [[link removed]]
Dear friend,
We’ve been hard at work to drive and accelerate the global transition away from animal testing. There’s a better, safer, more humane testing paradigm in our future. It requires us to embrace 21st-century testing methods grounded on human biology and to shed the use of beagles, primates, and other animals conscripted into archaic tests.
While we work on national policy — including driving the enactment of the FDA Modernization Act 3.0 — we are also working to dismantle the struts in the old, outdated animal research industrial complex.
At the top of our list is ending beagle factory farms that supply labs.
And I have some thrilling news on that front.
This week, Ridglan Farms, the nation’s second largest research beagle breeding facility (with more than 3,000 dogs at its facilities in Dane County, Wisc.), announced in a settlement agreement that it will relinquish its license to breed and sell beagles for experimentation. This is one of just two remaining beagle farms operating in the United States.
There’s a feature of the settlement we won’t accept: that the facility will be allowed to operate through July 1, 2026, prolonging the suffering of dogs in the facility. We’ll be fighting that feature of the agreement and working to get those dogs out of the confinement facility and into loving homes.
But the big-picture announcement that Ridglan is getting out of the beagle-mill business is a game-changing development. It builds on the closure of a horror of a beagle breeding facility in Virginia. In 2022, federal authorities seized approximately 4,000 beagles from Envigo’s facility in rural Virginia after it was found guilty of violating the Animal Welfare Act. Envigo’s corporate parent later pleaded guilty to criminal charges and paid a $35 million penalty.
The case against Ridglan had been building for months, and we’re grateful for the determined work of key local and national partners who’ve also been working so hard to shutter this beagle prison camp.
Last week, the Dane County Board of Supervisors voted 30-5 to urge the state to revoke Ridglan’s breeder license. The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture also rescinded Ridglan’s special exception allowing them to ship puppies under 7 weeks old — something they’ve been doing for years.
At the same time, we delivered a formal letter [[link removed]] to Special Prosecutor Tim Gruenke and urged him to file felony animal cruelty charges and seize the thousands of dogs still confined at Ridglan. Wisconsin law is clear: cruelty is a crime, and industry norms are no excuse.
On Tuesday, the special prosecutor reached the settlement described above.
Soon, Ridglan will not be involved in trafficking beagles for invasive experiments. And we are now focused on targeting Marshall BioResources in upstate New York as the last major beagle breeder in the United States.
Meanwhile, we are working with FDA Commissioner Marty Makary to hasten the move to phase out all use of dogs, primates, and other animals and to create a new norm in safety and efficacy testing for drugs, chemicals, pesticides, and other commercially available products.
With your support, we helped pass the FDA Modernization Act 2.0 in 2022 and ended the 84-year-old animal testing mandate. That started us down the path of eliminating this senseless cruelty, thanks to especially capable leadership from U.S. Sens. Rand Paul, M.D., R-Ky., and Cory Booker, D-N.J. Now we must finish the job.
Your support is critical to keep the pressure on to close the beagle mills that feed the pipeline of animal cruelty. Together, we can ensure that no contract labs, pharma companies, or university labs have any interest in buying the tormented beagles coming from Ridglan Farms.
And just as importantly, please support our work so that we can take on Ridglan, Charles River Laboratories, and the other companies that feed animals into a system that produces more suffering and does little to sustain life of any sort.

Here’s how you can help:
* Contact your U.S. Senators and Representatives and urge them to support the FDA Modernization Act 3.0 [[link removed]] (H.R. 2821/S. 355).
FDA Modernization Act 3.0 [[link removed]]


* Support our work so we can continue holding Ridglan Farms, Charles River Laboratories, and others accountable.

Ridglan is one ugly vestige of the animal-research industrial complex. It has been a fixture in a broken system of drug testing that harms animals and fails people.
I say good riddance. A new testing model will replace it, more solidly grounded on science and without the immoral use of animals in that system.
For the animals,
Wayne Pacelle [[link removed]] Wayne Pacelle
President
Animal Wellness Action
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