Legislator's Dream

The United States Department of Agriculture has a research project that involves the spread of a parasite called Toxoplasma gondii. It can infect humans, who usually pick it up when they ingest or inhale the bug in a form called an oocyst. This can happen when meat containing oocysts is eaten undercooked, or through exposure to them in contaminated water, soil or cat feces (hence the inhaled part of the exposure).

USDA scientists obtain oocysts for study by feeding toxoplasmic-contaminated meat to kittens, who then shed them in their feces. Cats are, according to the department, the only animal which excretes the enviromentally-resistant form of T. gondii to be studied. After the oocysts are collected over a period of two to three weeks, the 2-month old kittens are killed and incinerated.

A group called the White Coat Waste Project has brought the practice to light with claims that killing the kittens is unnecessary. Once the kittens have stopped shedding oocysts in their feces, they are no longer contagious for ol' T. gondii and could be adopted out. The USDA disagrees, no doubt picturing the lawsuit that would follow should someone adopt one of the experimental kittens and then contract toxoplasmosis.

The Project cites Centers for Disease Control and Agricultural Research Service findings that show that when treated, the kittens are no longer contagious, but the United States Department of Agriculture isn't going to believe something just because it came from a government agency. After all, they're a government agency and so they know just how unreliable they can be. Off the record, of course.

Anyway, a couple of members of congress caught wind of the Project's complaints and one of them wrote a letter to the Secretary of Agriculture asking for details about the USDA's killing of kittens. They then teamed up to introduce legislation that would bar the USDA from tests which “subject cats to potentially painful or stressful procedures." They named it the Kittens In Traumatic Testing Ends Now Act, which has the acronym KITTEN Act because of course it does.

They thus are able to go on record as passing a law to protect kittens. Should anyone vote against it, their election opponents can literally ask them why they would vote to kill kittens. The campaign ads write themselves.