> The state actively subsidises factory farming which is at least 100 times more morally messed up than this but this could be shut down?

Yes, it could, and rightly so. Note that I’m not saying it should. I don’t know the details, and certainly can’t judge whether the (potential) benefits of this research warrant the suffering to animals.

What you should be angry about is not the existence of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Welfare_Act_of_1966, but the, as far as I can tell, nonexistence of federal laws regulating the treatment of farm animals (they are excluded from that law, and https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/farm-animal-protecti... says there aren’t similar federal laws regulating their welfare. The list of state laws at https://www.humanesociety.org/sites/default/files/docs/HSUS_... also is very short)

Also note that animal welfare laws typically aren’t about the killing of animals, but about their suffering. Society at large isn’t ready for forbidding the killing of animals for food or for medical research.