382 A Phillips and A Bellotti billion, 80 % of which is spent on grants, this roughly equates to $12 billion NIH spends on animal experimentation This figure does not include intramural NIH spending (i.e spending within internal NIH government campuses versus grants to colleges and universities), and thereby excludes USDA, Pentagon, Environmental Protection Agency, any other US federal spending on animal experiments ‘Conservative estimates, however, put it into the tens of billions annually ’ (Greek and Shanks 2009, p 8) Since 1995 Congress has tripled the NIH budget thereby becoming the primary market maker for animal experimentation in the USA Moreover, there is evidence that government subsidies for animal experimentation have incentivized the problem In another widely criticized NIHfunded experiment on cats, professors at the University of Wisconsin received millions in federal grant money to cut into the brains of cats, drill holes in their skulls, place wire coils in their eyes, deafen them, and then starve them to death (Hansen 2012) These Wisconsin experimenters did not even justify the cat deafening based on its benefits to humans (Hansen 2012) (FOIA records) Pound Seizure is a Declining Practice While the occurrence of using shelter cats and dogs in research is reported to be rapidly declining, there is in fact no mechanism to truly assess whether it is (without obtaining shelter disposition records of every animal from every animal shelter) Animal shelter staff, volunteers, animal rescue volunteers and communities are relied upon as watchdogs to ensure that Class B dealers and pound seizure not take hold in a shelter Until every state bans pound seizures, and the USDA eliminates the license classification for random source Class B dealers, all pets are at risk and could inadvertently become a victim of pound seizure To advance the abolition of animal experimentation, including on former family pets, the World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences is held every three years The 10th World Congress is scheduled for 2017 in Seattle, Washington Moreover, organizations such as the American Anti-Vivisection Society and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine are working with product testing, research, and educational facilities to change to non-animal testing models For the numerous non-animal models available, visit www.aavs.org/alternatives/ Successful arguments against pound seizure have included: • Pound seizure is a betrayal of trust because shelters mostly keep the practice secret