PETA U.S. Urges Pentagon to Stop Funding Horrific Experiments on Animals in Australia

08.05.2026

Sydney — In a letter sent this week, PETA U.S. offers a strategy to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth that would stop the ongoing waste of more than $21 million that is currently being poured into scam schemes overseas, amid criticism about the cost of the war with Iran: cut Pentagon funding for pointless and painful experiments on animals in Australia and other foreign countries that bring no benefit to the U.S.

PETA U.S.’ research reveals that the War Department has funneled more than $21 million into foreign animal laboratories in just the last seven years. This is just one slice of a staggering $57 million in taxpayer dollars that the Pentagon is wasting on outdated, painful, and scientifically dubious animal experiments.

For example, an experimenter at Australia’s Recce Pharmaceuticals is receiving $2 million to inflict severe thermal burns on rats and pigs, infect their open wounds with dangerous bacteria such as MRSA, and test experimental drug gels on the animals before killing them. PETA Australia and PETA U.S. sent officials at the institution a separate letter this week calling on them to end this wasteful and irrelevant testing.

A rat used in a Pentagon-funded experiment at Australia’s James Cook University. Images obtained through public records requests by PETA Australia.

“Millions are being spent to burn, poison, mutilate, and kill animals in cruel and fiscally imprudent experiments that offer no benefit to human health,” says Senior Campaigns Advisor to PETA Australia Mimi Bekhechi. “To advance research for humans as well as spare sentient animals, this funding urgently needs to be redirected toward state-of-the-art, animal‑free research.”

Other Australian laboratories that received funding from the Pentagon include:

• The University of Melbourne, which received nearly $700,000 to implant magnetic stents into the brains of sheep.
• The University of Queensland in St Lucia, which received more than $1.2 million to subject pigs to severe traumatic hemorrhage.
• James Cook University in Townsville, which received nearly $600,000 from the Pentagon to shave rats and plunge them into near-boiling water

PETA U.S. also urges Pentagon officials to audit the War Department to identify waste, fraud, and abuse in U.S.-based animal experimentation and ban the use of animals in Navy-funded decompression sickness and oxygen toxicity tests, and prohibit the use of dogs, cats, primates, marine animals, and other animals in Army weapon-wounding tests.

PETA — whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits. For more information, please visit PETA.org.au and follow PETA on Facebook and Instagram.

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