Major Beagle Breeding Facility to Halt Trade of Dogs to Labs

There’s some major movement on the front end of the trade in dogs for use in laboratories.

Ridglan Farms, the nation’s second-largest supplier of beagles for laboratory experiments, has agreed to surrender its license to breed and sell dogs for experimentation. This comes after years of accumulating evidence of animal mistreatment by this supplier of laboratory animals. It also reflects decades of sustained advocacy from animal protection organizations seeking the wider cessation of breeding activities and the commercialization of laboratory animals. The settlement was announced this week by the special prosecutor investigating the Wisconsin-based company for felony animal cruelty.

While this agreement marks the beginning of the end for one of America’s largest beagle mills supplying labs, it falls short of delivering immediate relief to the dogs still confined inside the facility. Under the terms of the deal, Ridglan will continue to breed and sell dogs until July 1, 2026, extending the suffering of thousands of animals already subjected to years of neglect and abuse.  The settlement agreement, valuable as it is in pushing Ridglan out of the beagle supply trade, still treats the dogs as inventory.

Equally concerning is the fact that violations at Ridglan Farms were initially missed by federal authorities, including the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS): violations were only identified after local and state authorities launched an investigation into the practices at Ridglan facilities. Of note, APHIS is entrusted with protecting the health and value of U.S. agriculture and natural resources but also regulates laboratory animals in the United States through its enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA). The incident reveals marked deficiencies in the federal oversight of animal colonies bred for laboratory research as well as the enforcement of existing laws.

It would be an easy feat for Animal Wellness Action to partner with its allies on this campaign and adopt every one of the beagles to loving homes.  (Pending approval from spouses, the authors of the article will start the volunteer process and take one each.)  That’s a goal we’ll be seeking to achieve.

Years of Documented Cruelty 

Ridglan has been tough on beagles for a very long time. Former employees, state veterinarians, and inspectors have reported ongoing illegal surgical procedures, chronic neglect, and other forms of animal abuse dating back to 2017. In early 2025, a Dane County judge determined there was overwhelming evidence of criminal conduct and appointed a special prosecutor to pursue the case. Despite repeated warnings and orders to correct violations, inspections showed that mistreatment of dogs continued unabated.

The Wisconsin Veterinary Examining Board later suspended the license of Ridglan’s lead veterinarian, confirming that the problems were systemic rather than incidental. The facility continues to confine more than 3,000 beagles, bred and sold for invasive and outdated experiments.

The Center for a Humane Economy and other animal welfare advocates urged Special Prosecutor Tim Gruenke to pursue felony charges under Wisconsin’s animal cruelty statutes and to seize the dogs, as federal authorities did in the 2022 Envigo case. That earlier enforcement action resulted in the rescue of approximately 4,000 beagles, the criminal conviction of Envigo’s corporate parent, and a $35 million penalty—the largest animal welfare settlement in U.S. history. Ridglan’s track record mirrors Envigo’s and warrants the same decisive and multi-pronged forms of intervention.

Still More Work to do on Upstate New York Beagle-Breeding Giant

With Ridglan on an eight-month phase-out, only Marshall BioResources (MBR) in Wayne County, N.Y. remains as a beagle supplier.  It’s an enormous operation, with a capacity to house 20,000 dogs. Like Ridglan, MBR has been scrutinized for its inhumane treatment of animals.  Reports show beagles restrained with tight-fitting inhalation masks used in chemical testing, struggling to remove them. MBR claims that the dogs were “trained” to wear the masks, labeling it as “learned helplessness”. A whistleblower report in June 2024 highlighted that beagles and ferrets were confined in filthy cages with dirty food and water containers. The report also alleged that puppies born with physical “imperfections,” such as different-colored eyes, were killed at birth.  Since 2007, the USDA has cited MBR for countless violations of the Animal Welfare Act, including inadequate veterinary care and poor living conditions.

Labs must stop buying dogs from these hellholes. The Congress and the FDA have squarely signaled that they want to see a winddown of this very ugly feature of drug screening and other laboratory testing practices. 

The turning point in this debate came with Congress passing, and President Biden signing, the FDA Modernization Act 2.0 in December 2022, eliminating the 84-year-old animal testing mandate for new drugs. Our work to introduce and push ahead the FDA Modernization Act 3.0 is designed to ensure the proper implementation of the original law. We’ve waited 84 years for the opportunity to move away from the use of dogs, primates, and other animals in testing, and now so many 21st century tools are available. There’s no reason to drag our feet and keep exercising the old instruments of pain and continue using animals when we know they are often not predictive of the human circumstance.

Stirred by the actions of Congress, the new leaders at the FDA and the National Institutes of Health have each announced initiatives to prioritize human-relevant science, including organoids, organ-on-chip technologies, and computational models that better predict human outcomes while avoiding animal suffering.

Commissioner Marty Makary captured it so well in his statement: “For patients, it means a more efficient pipeline for novel treatments. It also means an added margin of safety, since human-based test systems may better predict real-world outcomes. For animal welfare, it represents a major step toward ending the use of laboratory animals in drug testing. Thousands of animals, including dogs and primates, could eventually be spared each year as these new methods take root.” (Emphasis in the original.)

These developments reflect a growing consensus: animal testing is not just unethical; it is scientifically inferior. Human biology–based methods produce more accurate, faster, and less expensive results, representing the future of safe and effective product development.

A Humane Path Forward 

The phase-out of the operations of Ridglan Farms is a moment for all of us to celebrate.  The sustained campaign by Dane4Dogs and other groups, and our partnership with them, has yielded game-changing results.  With Envigo out of the picture and this development in Wisconsin, there is no reason for MBR to continue to exploit beagles.  Emerging technologies such as human organ-on-chip systems are already replicating how human tissues behave, obviating much of the need for live animal beagle models. For example, Harvard Scientist Donald Ingber and colleagues at the Wyss Institute developed microfluidic organ chips that mimic human lung, intestine and kidney physiology — pointing the way to fully replacing animal-based research.

In this case, moral purpose and scientific innovation are making the old animal testing structures look archaic and cruel.  Dismantling the architecture of the animal testing complex will require pulling a thousand stones out of the façade of this multibillion dollar complex.  But it’s time for a new superstructure when it comes to drug development and better outcomes when it comes to the effectiveness and safety of drugs. 

The current model of drug development is broken.  It’s expensive, delivering enormously expensive drugs to consumers.  It’s unreliable, with adverse reactions to drugs the fourth highest cause of death in the United States.  It’s also unsustainable forcing drug developers to seek blockbuster drugs that can offset the immense costs of animal testing in R&D and then failing to deliver cures or treatments that afflict tens of millions of Americans. 

We can do better and must do better.  Animal welfare grounds our involvement in this effort.  But we charge ahead knowing that when we swap out the animals for new human-biology based methods, we’ll have more people from illness and make drugs more affordable for all people throughout the world.