https://www.foxnews.com/politics/peta-animal-rights-groups-praise-trump-admin-bucking-animal-testing

Trump’s FDA and EPA are phasing out animal testing

Published April 13, 2025 11:47am EDT

The Trump administration is receiving an outpouring of support from animal advocacy groups, lawmakers and others for recent announcements to end animal testing within programs at the FDA and EPA. 

“PETA applauds the FDA’s decision to stop harming animals and adopt human-relevant testing strategies for evaluating antibody therapies,” Kathy Guillermo, PETA senior vice president, said in a statement.

“It’s a significant step towards meeting the agency’s commitment to replace the use of animals – which PETA has worked hard to promote. All animal use, including failed vaccine and other testing on monkeys at the federally-funded primate centers, must end, and we are calling on the FDA to further embrace 21st-century science,” the PETA statement continued. 

PETA’s statement followed the Food and Drug Administration announcement on Thursday that it is phasing out an animal testing requirement for antibody therapies and other drugs in favor of testing on materials that mimic human organs, Fox Digital first reported. 

“For too long, drug manufacturers have performed additional animal testing of drugs that have data in broad human use internationally. This initiative marks a paradigm shift in drug evaluation and holds promise to accelerate cures and meaningful treatments for Americans while reducing animal use,” FDA Commissioner Martin A. Makary, said in comments provided to Fox News Digital. 

“By leveraging AI-based computational modeling, human organ model-based lab testing, and real-world human data, we can get safer treatments to patients faster and more reliably, while also reducing R&D costs and drug prices. It is a win-win for public health and ethics.” 

Dogs, rats and fish were the primary animals to face testing ahead of Thursday’s announcement, Fox Digital learned. 

The phase-out focuses on ending animal testing in regard to researching monoclonal antibody therapies, which are lab-made proteins meant to stimulate the immune system to fight diseases such as cancer, as well as other drugs, according to the press release. 

Instead, the FDA will encourage testing on “organoids,” which are artificially grown masses of cells, according to the FDA’s press release.

Environmental Protection Agency chief Lee Zeldin announced on the same day that the agency would reinstate a 2019 policy from the first Trump administration to phase out animal testing at that federal agency. The EPA said in comment that the Biden administration moved away from phasing out animal testing, but that Zeldin is “wholly committed to getting the agency back on track to eliminating animal testing.”

“Under President Trump’s first term, EPA signed a directive to prioritize efforts to reduce animal testing and committed to reducing testing on mammals by 30% by 2025 and to eliminate it completely by 2035. The Biden administration halted progress on these efforts by delaying compliance deadlines. Administrator Zeldin is wholly committed to getting the agency back on track to eliminating animal testing,” EPA spokesperson Molly Vaseliou told the Washington Times. 

The EPA’s and FDA’s recent announcements also received praise from animal rights groups, including the White Coat Waste Project, which reported in 2021 that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases spent hundreds of thousands of dollars under Dr. Anthony Fauci’s leadership to test beagle dogs with parasites via biting flies.

“Thank you @DrMakaryFDA for your years of advocacy & outstanding leadership to eliminate FDA red tape that forces companies & tax-funded federal agencies to conduct wasteful & cruel tests on dogs & other animals!” the group posted to X last week.

“White Coat Waste made historic progress under Trump 45 to cut wasteful and cruel animal testing at the EPA and FDA, some of which was undone by the Biden Administration,” Justin Goodman, senior vice president at White Coat, told Fox News Digital on Sunday. 

“We applaud Administrator Zeldin and Commissioner Makary for picking up where Trump left off and prioritizing efforts to cut widely-opposed and wasteful animal tests. This is great news for taxpayers and pet owners as it sends a message to big spending animal abusers across the federal government: Stop the money. Stop the madness!”

Other animal rights groups and lawmakers praised the Trump administration for its recent moves to end animal testing. 

“We’re encouraged to see the EPA recommit to phasing out animal testing – a goal we’ve long championed on behalf of the animals trapped in these outdated and painful experiments,” Kitty Block, president and CEO of Humane World for Animals, said in a press release. “But promises alone don’t spare lives. For too long, animals like dogs, rabbits and mice have endured tests that inflict suffering without delivering better science. It’s time to replace these cruel methods with modern, humane alternatives that the public overwhelmingly supports.”

Other groups have come out and warned that there is not yet a high-tech replacement for animals within the realm of biomedical research and drug testing, and that humane animal testing is still crucial to test prospective drugs for humans.

“We all want better and faster ways to bring lifesaving treatments to patients,” National Association for Biomedical Research President Matthew R. Bailey said in a press release provided to Fox Digital. “But no AI model or simulation has yet demonstrated the ability to fully replicate all the unknowns about many full biological systems. That’s why humane animal research remains indispensable.”

Under his first administration, Trump took other steps to protect animals, including signing the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act into law in 2019, which made intentional acts of cruelty a federal crime.

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NIH Just Declared a Scientific Revolution! Here’s How PETA’s Been Leading the Charge

https://www.peta.org/blog/the-nih-just-declared-a-scientific-revolution-and-it-could-save-millions-of-lives/

Published April 29, 2025 by Keith Brown. Last Updated April 30, 2025.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) just lit a fire under scientific research, declaring a fundamental change in its funding away from cruel and outdated experiments on animals and shifting both money and focus toward non-animal research methods. In short, what PETA has been working for and advocating for years.

This move cannot be understated. It is a fork in the road, a 180-degree turn, a tectonic shift with far-ranging implications for humans and other animals that will ripple through science and biomedical research for generations. Finally recognizing that humans will never kill enough animals to treat the panoply of human maladies will free time and billions of wasted taxpayer dollars to pursue human-based solutions to human problems.

Animals benefit. Patients benefit. Taxpayers benefit. But make no mistake, PETA has been offering NIH the matches and kerosene for this well-deserved bonfire for years.

PETA has called on NIH to abandon the cruel, invasive, and deadly use of animals in experiments—practices that are not only ethically indefensible but scientifically backward. Animal experiments have repeatedly failed to produce effective cures or treatments for humans, wasting billions in taxpayer dollars and delaying progress in medical research. This has been a boondoggle of the highest order.

But a boondoggle that appears to be close to an end.

“By integrating advances in data science and technology with our growing understanding of human biology, we can fundamentally reimagine the way research is conducted—from clinical development to real-world application,” said NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. “This human-based approach will accelerate innovation, improve healthcare outcomes, and deliver life-changing treatments. It marks a critical leap forward for science, public trust, and patient care.”

We could scarcely have said it better ourselves. In fact, we have. Repeatedly, daily, loudly, and to anyone who would listen and many who would not. PETA scientists have been touting our Research Modernization NOW—a roadmap to phase out pointless and deadly animal experiments.

NIH has adopted several recommendations from Research Modernization NOW in the announcement, including expanding funding, training, and infrastructure for non-animal methods and mitigating bias towards experiments on animals in NIH grant review panels, a problem that PETA scientists recently exposed in a first-of-its-kind study.

NIH’s announcement ushers in a new era of science—one rooted in relevance, compassion, and innovation. It’s major progress for every person who cares about animals, values human health, and demands the U.S. lead the world in scientific excellence. PETA looks forward to supporting this transformative shift and ensuring it results in real, lasting change for both humans and other animals.

PETA understands that taking this bold stance will inevitably invite criticism from entrenched interests who have long profited from the misery and the failure of animal experimentation. PETA thanks Dr. Bhattacharya for his—our—conviction that the path forward is compassionate, scientific, and animal-free. It is.

There is still more work to do. One key step is to close the seven failed National Primate Research Centers have harmed and killed  hundreds of thousands of monkeys and are an anchor on taxpayer dollars and science, failing to deliver promised vaccines or cures for 60 years.