The Trump administration has been lauded by animal rights groups, legislators, and others for its recent decision to phase out animal testing within the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) programs.
The move has been hailed as a significant stride towards adopting human-relevant testing strategies and reducing the suffering of animals.
"PETA applauds the FDAs decision to stop harming animals and adopt human-relevant testing strategies for evaluating antibody therapies," stated Kathy Guillermo, PETA senior vice president. The animal rights organization has been a vocal advocate for the replacement of animal testing, pushing for the end of all animal use, including failed vaccine and other testing on monkeys at federally-funded primate centers. "Its a significant step towards meeting the agencys commitment to replace the use of animals which PETA has worked hard to promote," the statement from PETA continued.
According to Fox News, the FDA announced last Thursday that it would be phasing out an animal testing requirement for antibody therapies and other drugs. Instead, the agency will favor testing on materials that mimic human organs. This move was primarily aimed at dogs, rats, and fish, which were the main subjects of testing prior to the announcement.
FDA Commissioner Martin A. Makary, in his comments to Fox News Digital, lauded the initiative as a paradigm shift in drug evaluation. "For too long, drug manufacturers have performed additional animal testing of drugs that have data in broad human use internationally," Makary said. "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."
The FDA's new approach will focus on testing "organoids," artificially grown masses of cells, as an alternative to animal testing. This shift is particularly relevant to the research of monoclonal antibody therapies, lab-made proteins designed to stimulate the immune system to combat diseases such as cancer.
On the same day, EPA chief Lee Zeldin announced the reinstatement of a 2019 policy from the first Trump administration to phase out animal testing at the EPA. The agency criticized the Biden administration for moving away from the phase-out of animal testing, but assured that Zeldin is "wholly committed to getting the agency back on track to eliminating animal testing."
The EPA spokesperson, Molly Vaseliou, told the Washington Times, "Under President Trumps 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."
The recent announcements by the EPA and FDA have been met with widespread approval from animal rights groups, including the White Coat Waste Project. The group had previously reported that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars under Dr. Anthony Fauci's leadership to test beagle dogs with parasites via biting flies.
"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."
However, some groups have cautioned 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. Thats why humane animal research remains indispensable."
The Trump administration's recent moves to end animal testing are not its first steps towards animal protection. In 2019, Trump signed the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act into law, which made intentional acts of cruelty a federal crime.
This continued commitment to animal welfare underscores the administration's dedication to ethical treatment of animals and the pursuit of modern, humane alternatives to traditional testing methods.
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