By Sara Amundson and Kitty Block
The writing is on the wall at the Oregon National Primate Research Center. A new day is dawning, and with the U.S. government dramatically shifting its funding and strategic emphasis to human-based research, the ONPRC wants to move in the same direction.
By Sara Amundson and Kitty Block
Every day in the U.S., beagles—known for their calm, gentle demeanor—are bred for use as compliant test subjects in the commercial testing industry. Most of the puppies are born just to be a living body on which chemicals can be tested and the results observed. The vast majority of these dogs will never feel grass beneath their paws or play with a ball. Instead, they will live and die in laboratories.
8/6/26 update: The Senate Agriculture Committee did not pass a Farm Bill today, leaving the controversial Save Our Bacon Act out of the legislation as negotiations continue.
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:
By Sara Amundson and Kitty Block
For the 190 million animals used in testing and research each year around the world, the shift to non-animal methods cannot come soon enough.
We have always been determined to see a day when elected officials, heads of major government agencies, and the leaders of scientific institutions and corporations came around to the position we have held for a long time:
That we need not rely on animals to gauge the safety of chemical and pesticide products.
Update June 4, 2026: The U.S. House of Representatives passed its FY 2027 federal funding bill for the USDA and the FDA with a vote of 213 - 210. The Senate Appropriations Committee has not yet released its version of this bill. One positive note from today’s floor debate: the House approved two amendments led by Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.)—to prevent FDA from issuing guidelines calling for dog testing and to prevent USDA from conducting or funding painful research on dogs or cats.
By Sara Amundson and Kitty Block
Over 90% of drugs that appear successful in animal tests go on to fail in human clinical trials. This is a staggering statistic underscoring that animals are biologically different from humans, and so animal-based research can be deeply unreliable, which, in turn, hinders medical progress and slows down the advancement of our scientific knowledge. Even more closely related species like mice and rats can react very differently when exposed to the same substances.
