Washington (CNN) A Republican lawmaker wants answers from the Department of Agriculture about taxpayer-funded research experiments at a Maryland facility that have allegedly led to the deaths of hundreds of cats and kittens.

Citing documents reviewed by his office, Michigan Republican Mike Bishop described a decades-old research project at the USDA's Animal Parasitic Diseases Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, in which hundreds of kittens are bred, fed meat that is infected with Toxoplasma, and later killed and discarded by "incineration."

In a letter to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue dated Monday, Bishop wrote that he was "shocked to hear that the USDA, the very organization set out to enforce animal welfare laws and regulations, was treating the life of animals with such contempt."

Bishop went on to say that it appears that the USDA project "uses kittens as test tubes."

"Put simply, it creates life to destroy life," he added. "While I support the objective of making food safer and protecting people and animals from infectious diseases, we must ensure taxpayer dollars are used effectively, efficiently and humanely."

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