Beagle dogs from the USA for animal experiments in Germany

: Press release; Published: 22 December 2025

Beagle dogs from the USA for animal experiments in Germany

Frankfurt Hahn Airport, located between Frankfurt am Main and Trier, is widely known for low-cost holiday flights. For more than 100 beagle dogs, however, it became a transit point for painful experiments and certain death. Investigators from the organization SOKO Tierschutz filmed how the animals arrived on 1 October 2025 on a SmartLynx Airlines flight from New York at Frankfurt Hahn Airport and were subsequently transported onward (1). Their destination: animal experimentation laboratories in Germany and possibly elsewhere in Europe. The nationwide organization Doctors Against Animal Experiments (DAAE) has documented for years what dogs are subjected to in German laboratories: death by chemical toxicity, dental surgeries, or artificially induced heart attacks (2). The organization is calling on Frankfurt Hahn Airport to immediately stop handling transports of animals destined for laboratories.

The largest US breeder of animals for laboratories is Marshall BioResources in North Rose, New York. Around 23,000 dogs are bred there in industrial-scale facilities, along with ferrets, cats, and minipigs. Corporate customers for dogs include companies such as Bayer in Wuppertal and Boehringer in Biberach an der Riss (3). Doctors Against Animal Experiments assumes that the beagles filmed at Frankfurt Hahn Airport originated from this breeding facility.

Disturbing footage recorded two years ago at Marshall using hidden cameras showed how beagle puppies are “trained” to wear a mask for inhalation experiments. The animals writhe and desperately try to tear the mask from their faces with their paws (4).

“By the time the beagle dogs arrive at the laboratory, they have already endured a long ordeal: possibly painful ‘training,’ the long flight isolated in transport boxes, and further transport — all of which are extremely traumatic, especially for the puppies,” explains veterinarian Dr. Corina Gericke, vice chair of DAAE. “Yet what awaits the dogs in the laboratory is far worse.”

Most experiments conducted on dogs are toxicity tests. In these, a test substance is administered daily via a gavage tube through the esophagus into the stomach — for 28, 90, or 120 days. Depending on the dose and substance, the animals suffer from nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, paralysis, or convulsions. At the end of this painful procedure, the animals are killed so that their organs can be examined for changes. According to official federal statistics, 812 of a total of 2,220 dogs were used for this purpose in 2024. A further 714 dogs were used for vocational training purposes, such as surgical exercises. The federal state with the highest “use” of dogs in 2024 was North Rhine–Westphalia with 571 dogs, followed by Hesse (521 dogs) and Baden-Württemberg (363 dogs) (5).

“There is no law that requires animal testing on dogs, and the results cannot be transferred to humans,” says Gericke. “In addition to the traumatic experiences of breeding and transport, even healthy dogs differ greatly from humans in many respects.” Many foods that are harmless to humans are highly toxic to dogs, such as chocolate, grapes, raisins, macadamia nuts, or onions. Medications like ibuprofen, diclofenac, blood pressure drugs, and others intended for humans can also be fatal to dogs even in small amounts.

DAAE is calling on Frankfurt Hahn Airport to immediately stop processing animal transports to laboratories. The organization is also urging “dog users” such as Bayer and Boehringer to switch without delay to animal-free, human-relevant testing methods, for example using mini-organs generated from human cells and multi-organ chip systems.

beagle frankfurt hahn1 soko
Beagle dogs during loading at Frankfurt Hahn Airport. Source: SOKO Tierschutz e.V.

References

Further information

Animation movie “Otto the beagle - The reality of animal testing on dogs“ >>

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