Progress on Animal Testing But Major Battles Loom

In a recent letter I sent, I mused that we may be living through a Berlin Wall moment for animal testing.

For nearly a century, a broken health research system has relied on the suffering and killing of dogs, primates, and other animals in laboratories — defended as necessary, even indispensable for human progress.

But today, what was once an impregnable fortification against reforms in animal testing does not appear nearly as imposing today. That fortification is showing the stress fractures of the steady pounding of moral concern about hurting beagles, primates, and other animals who suffer just like we humans. Adding to that, there’s an emerging sentiment within academia and government, counterintuitive though it may seem, that animal tests are probably not the best pathway for finding solutions to human health challenges and disease.

In 2022, together, we passed the FDA Modernization Act 2.0 — historic legislation that eliminated the outdated federal mandate requiring animal testing for new drugs. That single reform offered the prospect of a transition away from inefficient, invasive, and often deadly tests on animals toward human-relevant strategies like organoids, organs-on-chips, computational modeling, and advanced in vitro systems.

But we’ve long understood that passing a law that unlocks the use of technology and innovation in the interest of the public good is just the first step. The second step is robust implementation. And the third is socializing the values that undergird the law to confer maximal benefit to society.

As a society, we are in a tug of war with special interests who are profiting from their use of animals and locked into a worldview that cannot imagine a different, better, safer future. These actors are committed to the status quo.

FDA Commissioner Working to Improve Drug Development Without Animals

Last April, FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary released a “Roadmap to Reduce Animal Testing,” committing the agency to make animal tests the exception rather than the norm within three to five years.

The National Institutes of Health, the biggest research grant-maker in the world, is also signaling a pivot toward human-based science.

All the while, key lawmakers in Congress are signaling to both agencies and other federal research institutions that we should get on with the transition toward human-relevant science and leave the animals out of it.

But nobody who understands this problem believes that the multi-billion-dollar animal research complex will submit without a fight.

Charles River Laboratories, a publicly traded company that is recognized as one of the largest global users of nonhuman primates and dogs in regulatory toxicology, has invested $510 million to acquire K.F. (Cambodia) Ltd., a major supplier of nonhuman primates (NHPs) used in biomedical research. K.F. Cambodia has been under scrutiny for passing off wild-caught primates as captive bred. Charles River also holds a controlling interest in a primate supplier in Mauritius. The combined capture of the two primate suppliers allows the company to internally source most of the primates it uses for regulatory testing.

It seems mightily curious for the company to make such an investment when regulators and lawmakers are pointing them in a different direction.

That tells us that we cannot relax or relent in our efforts. 

Battles Ahead

There are many dynamics at work. But I want to alert you to three urgent battles:

• Oregon — 5,000 Primates and a Historic Opportunity
  

  
  Last year alone, there were 70,000 primates, many of them endangered animals captured from the wild, used in invasive experiments in the United States.

  In Oregon, a once-unthinkable opportunity is emerging.

  Oregon Health & Science University houses approximately 5,000 primates at the largest primate research center in the United States. Oregon state Rep. David Gomberg — a steadfast ally to the Center for a Humane Economy and Animal Wellness Action — has been the key driver of the effort to transform the facility into a primate sanctuary. He’s won over Governor Tina Kotek and so many other thought leaders in the state.

  And now the NIH is offering the prospect of funding the transformation of that facility from a house of pain to a safe zone for the animals.

  Imagine it: the nation’s largest primate lab becoming a refuge instead of a pipeline for invasive experiments.

  If we succeed in Oregon, it will provide a model for a humane transition for the six other regional primate centers.

• Ridglan Farms — 2,000 Beagles at Risk

  
  After sustained pressure from animal advocates, Ridglan Farms — one of the last major beagle breeding facilities for laboratories — agreed to stop breeding and selling dogs by July.

  But today, the company still holds approximately 2,000 beagles. We are deeply concerned that without a commitment from the company, those dogs could be sold into experiments or killed.

  Our goal is clear: Every single dog must be placed into a loving home.

  It’s our intent to negotiate a pathway for full rehoming. It’s an honorable outcome for the company and it’s the right outcome for the dogs unfairly conscripted into this kind of painful servitude, for no good outcome.
  We cannot allow these dogs to become casualties of a collapsing business model.

• Marshall BioResources — 20,000 Beagles as “Inventory”

  
  One beagle breeding giant still dominates the U.S. supply chain: Marshall BioResources, with roughly ten times the number of beagles that Ridglan has and no plans to exit the business.

  Twenty thousand dogs.

  They are treated as inventory on a balance sheet. We intend to upend that business model — through legislation, regulatory reform, corporate pressure, and public exposure. Adapt or close.

  That is the choice. 

Congress, Health Agency Leaders, and You Can Lead the Way

The Secretary of Health and Human Services and key lawmakers in Congress are actively questioning primate imports, NIH grantmaking for animal testing, and federal agency reliance on animal models. Lawmakers from both parties are demanding answers. Public health leaders are acknowledging what experts and scientists have increasingly admitted for years: animal models often fail to predict human outcomes.

Even former NIH leaders concede that we must refocus on studying human diseases in humans.

But this is not enough. There must be a groundswell of citizen voices to support the good instincts of lawmakers and agency leaders.

When the Berlin Wall fell, it did not happen solely because long-time defenders of the old system suddenly changed their minds. It came because key drivers — moral, political, economic — became overwhelming.

A foundational shift on animal testing is grounded in two key principles: first, nonhuman animals are our equals when it comes to their capacity to suffer, and second, human ingenuity can unleash the power of human-based biology to unlock cures for human diseases, extending longevity and improving the quality of life.

I feel certain that we’ll look back on this long era of imprisoning beagles and primates and wonder why it took us so long to see the moral problems with that practical approach. And the intellectual rut that held back the embrace of superior testing methods.

But we cannot wait for that moment. We must deliver it.

Only through smart, strategic attention can we seize this moral and scientific opportunity. Please join this fight even more actively. Your support fuels the legislative strategy, the regulatory engagement, the corporate pressure campaigns, the sanctuary negotiations, and the rescue operations that make systemic change possible.

It’s hard work, but imagine the effects on the lives of millions of animals who’ll be spared the isolation and torments of the laboratory.

Wayne Pacelle, president of the Center for a Humane Economy & Animal Wellness Action, is the author of two New York Times bestselling books, “The Bond” and “The Humane Economy.”