The massive stakes of the Trump administration’s plans to end animal testing

The Trump administration is not known for particularly prioritizing animal welfare. But in its first few months, alongside announcements that it would seek to gut federal funding for scientific research, Trump officials have taken steps toward a goal that animal advocates have been championing for decades: the end of animal experimentation. On April 10, the Food and Drug Administration announced plans to phase out animal testing requirements for the development of monoclonal antibodies — used to treat a variety of diseases, including cancer and Covid-19 — and a range of other drugs. The Environmental Protection Agency, which has long required animal testing for substances including pesticides and fuel additives, also plans to revive an agency ban on animal testing that dates back to the first Trump administration. The agency had set deadlines under President Donald Trump in 2019 to reduce animal testing 30 percent by 2025, then eradicate it altogether by 2035. The Biden administration eliminated those deadlines, but now, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin “is wholly committed to getting the agency back on track,” spokesperson Molly Vaseliou told Vox in an email. Late last month came perhaps the most consequential announcement: a major new initiative from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world, to reduce the use of animals in research and accelerate the development of novel, animal-free methods. Estimates suggest NIH-funded research relies on millions of animals every year in the US. That includes mostly rodents, but also monkeys, dogs, pigs, rabbits, and others. But Trump’s NIH cited scientific literature that finds animal models can have limited relevance to human outcomes. Advocacy groups that oppose animal testing, including PETA and Humane World for Animals (formerly known as the Humane Society of the United States), celebrated the news as the most significant commitment ever made by NIH to reduce its dependence on animal experimentation. The recent announcements are “among the biggest news there’s ever been for animals in laboratories,” Elizabeth Baker, director of research policy for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), told me. Together, these moves represent a potentially monumental shift in American science — one that could spare millions of animals from painful experiments and, advocates hope, speed up the adoption of cutting-edge technologies to produce better, more reliable research than animal models ever did. But if the goal is not just to benefit animals, but also to make science better, the Trump administration is surely going about it in a strange way. It’s waging war on scientific institutions, seeking to slash research budgets — massively, seemingly indiscriminately, and questionably legally — at the NIH and the National Science Foundation, undermining decades of American leadership in science and medicine. It hasn’t committed any new funding toward its goal of advancing animal-free research methods. In this light, scientists are understandably skeptical that research policy coming from this administration could benefit science, rather than just sabotage it. Putting animal research on the chopping block, many believe, could merely be a convenient and popular way to slash support for science across the board. Yet those seeking to phase out government-funded animal research aren’t just anti-science radicals — they’re also animal testing critics who correctly point out that animal experiments are expensive, often ineffective, and come at a steep ethical cost. This has created a diverse, sometimes-uneasy coalition of animal welfare advocates, science reformers, and far-right political figures — some are willing to accept reforms any way they can get them; others are more wary of moves made by this administration, even when their agendas align. --- Read more from Vox on animal research and science policy In Vox’s Future Perfect section, you’ll find some of the deepest reporting and analysis available anywhere of the scientific, ethical, and political dimensions of animal experimentation. • The harrowing lives of animal researchers • Animal rights advocates are ready for Trump’s war on science • What can caged lab monkeys tell us about free human beings? • What went wrong with autism research? Let’s start with lab mice. • The US uses endangered monkeys to test drugs. This law could free them. • 43 lab monkeys escaped in South Carolina. They have a legal claim to freedom. --- The Trump administration’s NIH director, Jay Bhattacharya, embodies this alliance: An established scientist, albeit one who’s publicly aligned himself with the political right in recent years, he has praised the watchdog group White Coat Waste, which campaigns aggressively against animal research, as “heroes.” Now, with the NIH’s plan to reduce animal research, he’s arguing for the need to transition to animal-free methods in the language of scientific progress rather than the tear-it-all-down approach of other members of the Trump administration. Money and resources are powerful incentives in scientific research; allocate them in the right way, and scientists will be pushed to innovate in whatever direction is deemed important for societal progress. Evolving beyond the pervasive use of animals in science undoubtedly ought to be one of those priorities: Lab animals experience immense suffering in labs, living in intensive confinement and undergoing painful experiments involving blood draws, tube feeding, forced inhalation of substances, and other procedures. Finding alternatives that would end this agony would be one of American science’s most important achievements. It’s unclear whether a moonshot for alternatives to animal research can emerge from an administration that’s imposing widespread austerity on science. And there may be reason to worry that the Trump administration’s broader anti-regulatory approach could have negative consequences for the welfare of animals that still remain in labs. But many advocates of animal-free methods are willing to take the bet, hoping that they can use this uncertain, unsettled moment in American science policy to help usher in a paradigm shift in how the US uses animals in science. What will these policy changes actually do? For decades, animal advocates, and a growing number of scientists, have disputed whether animal trials are the most effective tools available in modern science. Historically, animal dissection laid the groundwork for early medicine, and breakthroughs from animal research have helped lead to polio vaccines, the preventative HIV medication PrEP, and treatments for Parkinson’s disease. But animals are not necessarily suitable proxies for humans, and more than 90 percent of drug trials fail between animal and human testing trials, according to a 2023 review by animal welfare advocates. It’s a problem many scientists acknowledge, albeit not always publicly. Former NIH director Francis Collins in 2014 privately discussed “the pointlessness of much of the research being conducted on non-human primates” in emails obtained by PETA via public records request. That the government is now planning cuts to animal research is undeniably groundbreaking. But how these planned cutbacks and phase-outs will actually unfold is more complex. In its announcement, the NIH said it will establish an Office of Research Innovation, Validation, and Application to scale the use of non-animal methods, expand funding for these approaches, evaluate human relevance, and include experts in alternative animal-free methods on grant review panels so that more of the agency’s funding is allocated toward those methods. Scientists are often incentivized to use animals in their research, as Celia Ford wrote for Vox earlier this year, a phenomenon sometimes called “animal methods bias.” Academic journals prefer to publish studies using animals, and internal research ethics review boards are mostly comprised of animal researchers. Advancing technologies, such as computational modeling or organ-on-a-chip technology, offer alternatives to animal testing, and many scientists around the world are embracing these new methods. But the scientific community has been slow to adopt them. To change that, the NIH’s new initiative will “address any possible bias towards animal studies” among its grant review staff. The agency will also publicly report on its annual research spending, something it hasn’t done in the past, “to measure progress toward reduction of funding for animal studies and an increase in funding for human-based approaches,” according to the recent announcement. The EPA, meanwhile, requires toxicology tests on animals for many substances that it regulates, including fuel and fuel additives, certain pesticides, and wastewater from industrial facilities. It has not yet announced an official plan to reduce animal research, though a 2016 agency reform required increased reliance on non-animal methods. Many are hoping the agency — which previously estimated that between 20,000 and 100,000 or more animals are used in toxicology testing every year — will recommit to its 2019 directive to end animal testing requirements by 2035, Baker says. Of course, announcements are meaningless without plans — and the FDA is the only agency to announce a plan that lays out a three-year timeline and alternative testing strategies. The FDA’s current requirements for animal testing in new drug approvals are somewhat unclear. The FDA Modernization Act 2.0, which Congress passed in 2022, authorized the use of non-animal alternatives in place of animal studies for FDA-regulated drugs, but some of the FDA’s regulations and nonbinding guidelines specifically mention animal tests. Pharmaceutical companies that have tried to obtain drug approval without animal testing have faced expensive delays. As a result, in practice, most drugs approved by the FDA are still tested on animals. According to the FDA, current regulations still require animal testing for monoclonal antibodies, which are lab-made proteins that can bind to and kill specific targets in the body. The FDA’s phaseout of animal tests will start with these antibodies and expand to other treatments. Lab animals’ immune responses are not predictive of human responses “due to interspecies differences,” the agency’s plan states. Safety risks may go undetected in animals, and the stress of laboratory life can affect their immune function and responses, a significant confounding factor in animal research that scientists have noted before. Animal testing is also very expensive: Monoclonal antibody development often involves monkeys, which can cost up to $50,000 per animal, according to the FDA; its plan notes it can cost $650 million to $750 million and take up to nine years to develop monoclonal antibody treatments, delaying delivery of new therapies to patients. While advancements like organ-on-a-chip and computer modeling are both exciting and laudable, counting on them to replace animals may be premature, Naomi Charalambakis, director of communications and science policy for Americans for Medical Progress, a nonprofit that supports the use of animals in research, said in an email. These tools, many of which are still under development, can’t fully replicate “the complexity of living organisms” — which is why she says they should be integrated “alongside traditional animal studies.” “Animal models remain vital for answering complex biomedical questions — particularly those involving whole-body systems, long-term effects, and unpredictable immune responses,” she says. [Image: A monkey used for research at the University of Muenster in Germany. https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/GettyImages-992170816.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] Scientists have also pointed out that the FDA’s promise that animal testing will be “reduced, refined, or potentially replaced” is not new. In 2022, the FDA Modernization Act 2.0 paved the way for alternatives to animal testing, and in December 2023, an NIH advisory committee made similar recommendations to develop non-animal methods. Regardless, the FDA’s and NIH’s recent announcements are among the first public statements by government organizations questioning the efficacy of animal testing. Can massive cuts to research funding help animals? In February, the Trump administration took the highly controversial step of capping “indirect costs,” the portion of universities’ research grants that cover administrative and operations expenses not directly tied to the research itself, at 15 percent of an institution’s grant. The research community has warned that the decision would be catastrophic for science — budgets will be slashed, young researchers may be laid off and see their careers ruined, and important science may fall by the wayside. But for animals, the news is “fantastic,” argues Jeremy Beckham, a law student and animal advocate who’s worked for organizations including PETA, PCRM, and the Beagle Freedom Project. While indirect costs are not a “meritless concept,” Beckham says, he believes universities renew research grants that harm animals while yielding little to no benefit in order to continue receiving operational funding. Universities “are allowing a lot of extremely pointless and cruel animal experiments to happen, because it’s such a gravy train for them for these indirect costs,” he says. Oregon Health & Science University, for example, which receives 56 percent of its grant in indirect costs for animal studies, has racked up several critical Animal Welfare Act citations for 14 animal deaths at its research labs since 2018. At Wayne State University in Michigan, researchers have induced heart failure in hundreds of dogs in a cardiac research experiment that has been running since 1991 but has “failed to help a single patient,” according to PCRM. Wayne State receives an indirect cost rate of 54 percent, according to a recent statement from the university. In a statement about its dog experiments, Wayne State argued that it’s important to continue the cardiovascular research, even if “science does not move at the pace we would like.” Critics of the cuts to indirect costs, including Harvard immunologist Sarah Fortune, have argued that funding cuts will mean labs are forced to euthanize their animals. But many, if not all, were already going to be killed in experiments, Delcianna Winders, director of the Animal Law and Policy Institute at Vermont Law and Graduate School, points out. In March, a federal judge blocked the NIH’s proposed cap on indirect costs, and universities are looking to negotiate. But if the proposal does go forward, “the number of animals in laboratories will plummet,” Beckham says. Animal welfare regulation is already bad, and may nosedive under Trump 2.0 Despite its promises to reduce the number of animals in labs, the Trump administration’s disdain for regulation may mean those animals that still remain in labs will suffer more. During Trump’s first presidency, enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act, the federal law that governs the welfare of animals used in research, took a nosedive. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the agency tasked with implementing that law, removed thousands of animal welfare reports, which had previously been publicly posted for decades, from its website. Given this precedent, Winders fears that going forward, the research industry will violate animal welfare laws “with complete impunity.” Research animals are already at a disadvantage under the Animal Welfare Act, and critics have insisted for decades that the act is insufficient and poorly enforced. The proverbial lab rat is not protected by the law — most mice and rats, birds, and cold-blooded animals are excluded from the Animal Welfare Act’s definition of “animal.” By some estimates, it covers as little as 5 percent of research animals. Nor does the law place any legal limits on what can be done to animals in experiments. “That’s left completely to the research facility,” Winders says. [Image: A beagle used for research in Spain. Beagles are widely used in experiments in the US and around the world. https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/WAM11504.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] When a researcher violates the Animal Welfare Act, the USDA has few options for enforcement. Because inspectors cannot confiscate animals that are required for research, they can really only levy monetary fines. But for facilities that receive millions in funding and spend billions on research, fines — most of which are less than $15,000 — are so low that they’re considered a “cost of doing business,” according to a 2014 USDA Office of Inspector General report. The USDA calculates these fines using an internal penalty worksheet, which factors in a facility’s size, compliance history, and the severity of its violations. The worksheet was recently obtained by Eric Kleiman, founder of research accountability group Chimps to Chinchillas, and it revealed that the USDA does not take a research institution’s revenue or assets into account when calculating fines. The USDA instead measures a facility’s size via the number of animals it uses, according to the worksheet, which divides research facilities into four size categories, the largest being facilities with 3,500 or more animals. But this metric is flawed, Kleiman says, since many labs don’t keep their animals on-site, instead contracting out with research organizations that perform the experiments on their behalf. In a statement, USDA spokesperson Richard Bell said the agency “carries out enforcement actions consistent with the authority granted under the Animal Welfare Act and associated regulations.” And in recent months, there have been alarming signs of an anti-regulation shift. A 2024 Supreme Court decision, SEC vs. Jarkesy, calls government agencies’ ability to issue fines into question. It’s possible this ruling could be interpreted in a way that bars the USDA from assessing fines, Winders says. “We’re still waiting to see how broadly the government interprets it,” she says. “Given that other enforcement mechanisms are not available against research facilities…civil fines were really the only pathway, and now that’s on the chopping block.” Since the June 2024 ruling, the USDA has issued few fines. The USDA is “still assessing the impact of the Jarkesy ruling,” Bell said. In the past, the Office of Inspector General has held the USDA accountable for poor enforcement — but in January, the USDA inspector general was fired and escorted out of her office, Reuters reported. The next month, the USDA OIG released a report on inspections of dog breeders — some of which supply dogs to research facilities. The report was critical of the USDA’s enforcement, but key information including the number of facilities inspected, the number of animal welfare violations, and photos was redacted “due to privacy concerns.” Winders has “never, ever seen that before,” she says, and it could set a new precedent for decreased transparency. About 15 percent of USDA’s workforce has accepted the Trump administration’s buyout to leave the agency, including more than 1,300 people in the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, which inspects and enforces the Animal Welfare Act, Reuters reported on May 5. “If inspectors aren’t there, how are they going to have a window into what needs to be done?” says Sara Amundson, chief government relations officer for Humane World for Animals. Regardless, the US is witnessing a seismic shift in how we use animals for research — or even whether we use them at all. It’s too soon to say what the Trump administration’s reforms to animal testing will accomplish, or whether they’ll produce durable changes in American science that manage to outlive an administration that has declared war on the scientific community. Although animal welfare is a bipartisan issue, it’s rarely been a priority for previous administrations, Republican or Democrat. To have an administration that, within months of taking power, is already meeting with animal welfare groups, holding congressional hearings, and taking strong stances on animal research issues is unprecedented, experts say. “I am optimistic,” Baker says.

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The massive stakes of the Trump administration’s plans to end animal testing