PETA has exposed a slew of experiments being funded by the U.S. Department of War in foreign countries. The organization wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth urging him to stop the alleged inhumane experiments. PETA claims that the Department of War (formerly known as the Department of Defense) has used taxpayer money to fund animal experiments under two administrations.

In April 2026, White Coat Waste (WCW) filed a lawsuit against the Department of Defense to release various photos and videos of what the organization describes as “secret labs” in Peru, where primate experiments allegedly take place. “From Fort Detrick to Peru to Thailand, our recent investigations have uncovered how millions in military monkey business worldwide is being bankrolled by the Pentagon,” WCW Senior Vice President said in a conversation with Military.com.

“Our new lawsuit covers five different FOIA requests that we submitted for videos and other documents, detailing Pentagon primate testing in U.S. and foreign labs. The organization claimed that American taxpayers are the “largest funder of animal testing in the entire world.” The WCW vice president claimed that experiments conducted in Wuhan contributed to the pandemic and alleged that the research was funded using U.S. taxpayer money.

Since then, PETA has written a letter to Pete Hegseth, urging the department to stop the “gruesome and ongoing animal testing involving more than $57 million in public funds.” Vice president of international laboratory methods at PETA, Shalin Gala, spoke about the matter in a conversation with Military.com.

Gala revealed that a recent research from PETA revealed that the Pentagon has been using “tens of millions of taxpayer dollars” to find “wasteful animal experiments.” He revealed that the experiments conducted in such foreign laboratories have “weak accountability” with little to no oversight. According to Gala, the experiments dail to yield results and the experiments to “advance human health or military readiness”.

The 24-page letter also urged DOD to put an immediate ban on U.S. Army weapon-wounding tests, which are conducted on various animals. According to Gala, the weapon-wounding tests date back to the 80s and are related to something known as Policy 84. The policy allowed animals to be used in weapons-testing experiments. The letter stated that the U.S. Army Medical Research & Development Command (USAMRDC) had removed all mentions of Policy 84 from its website.

However, according to Gala, more work needs to be done to formally prohibit the experiments. In December 2025, the DHA revealed to PETA that Policy 84 had officially been rescinded, meaning that it was no longer valid. “The issue that we’re having now is that while they’ve rescinded it, which is a good thing, there’s still no explicit ban on such tests,” Gala said. “So, we want them to explicitly ban these sorts of experiments going forward.”