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US president Donald Trump is earning rare praise from animal advocacy groups, including PETA, after federal agencies announced plans to phase out animal testing. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have outlined changes that would shift research practices towards modern, humane alternatives.
Kathy Guillermo, senior vice president at PETA, called the FDA’s announcement “a significant step” towards ending harmful and outdated testing methods. “PETA applauds the FDA’s decision to stop harming animals and adopt human-relevant testing strategies,” she said, reported Fox News.
The group is also urging a broader commitment to end all government-funded animal experiments, including those on monkeys at primate research centres.
The FDA plans to replace animal tests with tools such as lab-grown human organoids and AI-based modelling. Commissioner Dr Martin Makary said these approaches could lead to safer treatments, faster drug approvals, and lower costs — all while reducing harm to animals.
At the same time, EPA chief Lee Zeldin announced the reinstatement of a 2019 Trump-era directive to eliminate animal testing at the EPA by 2035. That earlier policy had been slowed under the Biden administration, according to EPA officials. Zeldin promised to bring the agency “back on track.”
However, the National Association for Biomedical Research warned that animal testing remains necessary in some areas of drug development where technology cannot yet replicate complex biological responses.
Trump had earlier mentioned that taxpayer money was being wasted on unnecessary research. During an address to Congress in March the president said government had spent $8 million on "making mice transgender."
According to a report from the White Coat Waste Project, the watchdog group opposing government-funded animal testing, which claimed that over $10 million in taxpayer money had been "wasted" on studies involving transgender mice, rats, and monkeys in university labs.
