POUND SEIZURE: A HORRIFIC PRACTICE PUTTING SHELTER ANIMALS AT RISK
Pound seizure is an archaic and horrifically cruel practice whereby municipal animal shelters provide animals — alive or dead — to animal testing facilities, where they are tortured in experiments and eventually killed.
Are dogs and cats from your local animal shelter being sold to animal testing facilities?
The answer to this question may shock you. As of 2026, pound seizure is still legal in 33 U.S. states. If you reside in a state that permits, or even mandates, this cruel practice, it is entirely possible that loving, adoptable animals from your local shelter are being provided to laboratories for testing.
How can I tell if my local shelter participates in pound seizure?
Sadly, without submitting formal requests to your local government, you usually can’t. Shelters that participate in pound seizure are required to hang signage and include a statement about pound seizure in their intake paperwork to ensure that the public is aware that animals surrendered may be sold to a laboratory, however, most shelters fail to adhere to this rule.
But why would a shelter want to give their animals to an animal testing facility?
Typically, for financial gain. In most cases, shelters are monetarily compensated for every animal they provide to a testing facility. And, horrifically, when laboratories seek animals who are already deceased, shelters are incentivized to kill healthy, adoptable animals, just so that they can fulfill a laboratory’s order.
Shelters are meant to be lifelines, not pipelines.
Meet rescued pound seizure survivors, who were transferred from an animal shelter in Mexico to an animal testing facility where they underwent agonizing experimentation. While the dogs pictured above were liberated from laboratory abuse, most of the animals who are forced into this system do not make it out alive.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of animals enter municipal animal shelters across the United States. These shelters are funded by taxpayers who trust that they serve as safe havens—places where lost animals are reunited with their families and adoptable animals are given a chance at a loving home. Yet in states where pound seizure is allowed, that promise of safety is broken. Under this outdated policy, friendly and healthy animals can be transferred from shelters to laboratories, where they will suffer horrific abuse by experimentation and, eventually, be killed.
It is time for this outrageous practice to end, and Beagle Freedom Project is leading the charge to abolish pound seizure once and for all.
Beagle Freedom Project is currently working on lifesaving
legislation to be introduced in 2027.
And we’ll need your support. Check this page regularly for petitions, events, and other ways you can take action. Please consider making a donation today to help us introduce legislation in the jurisdictions where pound seizure is still permitted—and work to ban this cruel practice for good.
