There’s exciting news regarding our work to get animals out of laboratories and keep them out. The House Appropriations Committee has advanced its Fiscal Year 2027 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Bill on a 34–28 vote, and the report language that accompanies the package promises to advance many of our priorities.

The report’s highlights include:

• Strong overall support for new approach methods (NAMs) that do not rely on animals.
• A request that NIH take specific actions to ensure that grant applicants have “sufficiently considered non-animal alternatives” as part of any justification for further animal use; create agency requirements and incentives for the development and use of scientifically robust non-animal methods; and identify and recruit peer reviewers with expertise in non-animal methods.
• Recognition of the newly created Office of Research Innovation, Validation, and Application at the National Institutes of Health, and its central role in agency-wide development and expansion of animal-free science.
• Support for the Complement Animal Research in Experimentation (Complement-AIRE) program, to fund projects that develop, standardize and validate human-based scientific and biomedical methods.
• A demand for stronger coordination between NIH and other federal agencies to support the phase out of animal tests, and a request that NIH provide a report on its efforts to prioritize human-based research models.
• Encouragement for the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods to promote and maintain standardized and public-facing terminology and definitions for statutory and regulatory purposes.
• Reinforcement of restrictions on the use of dogs in painful experiments.

It is incredible to see this kind of direction coming from Congress on issues of such longstanding importance to us, and we were delighted to see so many of our requests and proposals taken up by the committee and incorporated into its final report.

We didn’t get all of the things we sought. Recently, the NIH announced that it had begun talks to convert the Oregon National Primate Research Center into a sanctuary for primates retired from laboratory use. We really wanted to see the Congress communicate its support for this, but it didn’t happen. We urge Congress to work with us on a solution for ending the suffering of primates in research and breeding facilities.

The surest way to get animals out of the lab is to ensure that reliable alternatives are readily available. Momentum for replacing animals with alternatives in scientific and research testing has been growing on Capitol Hill and across federal agencies over the last few years. This dynamic appropriations package gives the NIH, the nation’s premier health research agency and currently the largest funder of animal research testing, both greater authority and more capacity to pursue important reforms for which we have long advocated. NIH's global reputation can expedite the replacement of animals in research and testing around the world. And we can’t wait to see the good that comes from all of this.