Controversial research on cats terminated: USDA

A controversial research program that led scientists to kill thousands of cats over decades has been terminated. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently announced that it is putting an end to its Agricultural Research Services division's experiments conducted since 1982 that involved infecting cats with toxoplasmosis. The disease is usually caused by eating undercooked contaminated meat. Once the cats were infected and the parasite harvested, the felines were put down. The agency announced that "toxoplasmosis research has been redirected and the use of cats as part of any research protocol in any ARS laboratory has been discontinued and will not be reinstated." The 14 remaining uninfected cats will be put up for adoption by agency employees.