1,500 Puppies Shipped – Who Approved This?

Man holding a puppy at an animal shelter — Photo: hedgehog94 / Shutterstock

A South Carolina congresswoman wants to shut down the pipeline that turns puppies into lab test subjects, and federal records already show more than 1,500 dogs shipped for experiments in under two years.

Quick Take

Rep. Nancy Mace introduced the PUPPS Act on September 21, 2026, to ban breeding and selling dogs for research labs.
Records reviewed by White Coat Waste show breeder Oak Hill Genetics shipped 1,518 hound-mix dogs to labs between January 2025 and June 2026.
Mace says the National Institutes of Health broke a promise to end painful dog and cat research.
White Coat Waste says the agency put more than $225 million into new dog and cat experiments since February 2025.
The full bill text isn’t public yet, so exact enforcement details remain unclear.

A Bill Aimed at the Puppy Pipeline

Mace filed the PUPPS Act on September 21, 2026, and it now sits with the House Agriculture Committee. Her office says the goal is simple: “shut down America’s puppy pipeline to research labs” and protect dogs “already trapped in the system”. The bill follows months of pressure from Mace on federal health officials over how taxpayer dollars fund dog breeding for experiments.

What the Shipment Records Show

Documents obtained through open-records requests point to a working commercial supply chain, not a one-time incident. Oak Hill Genetics shipped 1,518 hound-mix dogs to laboratories over an 18-month stretch, with some animals going to labs still receiving National Institutes of Health money. A separate investigation names Marshall BioResources as the nation’s largest commercial breeder of dogs and cats for research use, tying its animals to federally funded university labs.

These figures come from advocacy group White Coat Waste’s review of the records rather than from a government-published dataset. That doesn’t make the numbers false, but it does mean the full underlying paperwork, like transport manifests or grant-level spending breakdowns, hasn’t been made public for independent review.

A Broken Promise on Federal Funding

Mace sent a letter on January 31, 2026, to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., accusing the National Institutes of Health of going back on a pledge to end harmful dog and cat research. Her letter claims the agency renewed funding for experiments that “induce strokes in puppies and kittens” and breed dogs to go blind. White Coat Waste separately calculated more than $225 million in new agency spending on dog and cat experiments since February 2025.

Breeders and Researchers See It Differently

Not every dog breeder fits the “puppy mill” label critics use. Standing Stone Kennels, a hunting-dog breeding operation, says every litter is planned around health screening, genetic testing, and trained, titled parent dogs. That’s a different business than lab-animal supply, but it shows responsible breeding standards exist. Separately, federal guidance on research breeding colonies says they can be justified when investigators need specific genetic lines to study diseases like muscular dystrophy.

The Fight Ahead in Congress

This isn’t the first time lawmakers have pushed the National Institutes of Health on dog testing. Rep. Greg Steube raised similar concerns in a 2024 congressional submission, citing tens of millions spent yearly on dog experimentation for bleeding-disorder and genetic studies. The agency has shifted supply sources before, phasing out one controversial breeder category over a decade ago. Whether the PUPPS Act clears committee will test how much appetite Congress has for cutting that funding now.

NEW: A bill introduced in Congress would ban breeding and selling dogs for use in research labs.@RepNancyMace (R-SC) introduced the Prohibiting Unethical Procedures on Pets in Science (PUPPS) Act, which would amend the Animal Welfare Act to:

🔹 Ban breeding dogs specifically… pic.twitter.com/dukvWALKfR

— Scott Taylor (@ScottTaylorTV) September 22, 2026

For now, the bill is a marker in the sand rather than settled law. It still needs committee approval, floor votes in both chambers, and a presidential signature before any puppy pipeline actually closes. Mace’s team is betting that public anger over taxpayer-funded animal suffering, backed by hard shipment numbers, will be enough to move it further than past efforts got.