Here’s a roundup of last week’s biggest news stories related to animal research — all the recent media coverage you need to know right now to be the most effective activist for animals in labs.
[Graphic Content] “Bottomless” Issues: A Whistleblower’s Account of OHSU’s Labs
Guest Author: Former OHSU Husbandry Staff Member, Rise for Animals, 3/6/2025
A former Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) lab worker exposes their experiences involving the horrific suffering of animals — mice with open skulls, starving ferrets with metal head caps, and rats frozen alive — amidst a toxic work culture. See their chilling photos and read their testimony here: 📰 Full Story →
Baby Monkeys “Pointlessly” Tortured With Your Tax Dollars
Rise for Animals, 3/5/2025
Despite acknowledging that his research lacks scientific value, NIH-funded researcher Stephen Suomi continued to receive our tax dollars to conduct cruel and unnecessary experiments on baby monkeys — while the scientific community publicly praised him and the system protected its own. 📰 Full Story →
Feds Descend on Colorado Lab After PETA Sting
PETA, 2/27/2025
“A new PETA undercover investigation has carefully recorded the systematic neglect of dogs and cats at Red Beast Enterprises Inc., a Fort Collins laboratory doing business as High Quality Research (HQR), which gets paid to test drugs and other products in crude ways on dogs, cats, and rats . . . animals were documented to be housed in poor conditions and left to suffer from untreated and painful eye ailments, open sores, chronic skin inflammation, respiratory distress, stress-induced zoochosis, and more.”
“PETA’s investigators documented that HQR’s veterinarians put gynecological forceps down the throats of dogs there and cut their vocal cords with them so that–as the laboratory’s president described it–they wouldn’t bother staff by being as ‘loud’ or ‘shrill.’ The veterinarians denied the dogs pain relief following this ‘debarking,’ which some dogs endured twice.”
“HQR obtained dogs from Ridglan Farms Inc., a notorious Wisconsin breeding factoring currently under criminal investigation for allegations of cruelty to dogs.” 📰 Full Story →
RFK Jr. urged to halt Biden-era animal testing on cosmetics
Paul Bedard, Washington Examiner, 2/27/2025
“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is being urged to halt a set of [FDA] rules requiring that some cosmetics and sunscreens be tested on animals, considered an outdated and harmful practice by animal advocates . . . Kennedy, who oversees the FDA as Secretary of Health and Human Services, has ruled out animal testing for cosmetics on at least one campaign questionnaire.”
“‘RFK Jr. and the prospective FDA commissioner have both spoken and written extensively about the wastefulness of the FDA’s bureaucracy. The sunscreen testing requirement is exactly the kind of burdensome regulatory bureaucracy that both of those people need, and want, to eliminate,’….” 📰 Full Story →
How the Trump Administration May Shape the Future of Animal Testing in America
Jane Kenney, Daily Fetch, 3/1/2025
“One of the most significant ways the Trump administration may shape the future of animal testing is through diminished funding. Federal research programs that rely on animal testing have historically received substantial government support, but shifting priorities and regulatory changes could lead to a reduction in these funds . . . in favor of alternative research methods.”
“Additionally, there is a growing push — both within the scientific community and from public advocacy groups — to move away from traditional animal testing in favor of more ethical and technologically advanced alternatives. The Trump administration’s emphasis on business-friendly policies and cost-cutting measures may accelerate this transition, as private industries seek more efficient and less controversial methods for testing. If federal agencies reduce their reliance on animal testing, it could lead to a broader shift in research funding, encouraging investment in artificial intelligence, organ-on-a-chip technology, and other innovative alternatives that promise greater accuracy and ethical viability. This potential decrease in funding could mark a turning point in how scientific studies are conducted, shaping the future of animal testing for years to come.” 📰 Full Story →
The harrowing lives of animal researchers
Celia Ford, Vox, 3/3/2025
“‘We watched him die,’ former research assistant Alyssa told me . . . ‘And then we did what we always do, which is take him apart.’ . . . Killing and dissecting monkeys — up to seven per day, she remembers — was part of the lab’s standard protocol . . . She wore a specially fitted mask to avoid breathing in bone dust while sawing through their skulls.”
“Animal research is traumatic — obviously for the animals unlucky enough to be involved, but also for many of the humans tasked with harming them . . . ‘We are the mad scientists. We are like the people in horror films, torturing them.’” 📰 Full Story →
Amid Legal Troubles, Monkey-Breeding Facility Backers Expand Operations
Animal Welfare Institute, 3/3/2025
“ . . . Safer Human Medicine (SHM) — the company behind the massive monkey-breeding facility planned in Georgia — has acquired a facility in Florida to hold non-human primates slated for biomedical research. The 70-acre facility in LaBelle, Florida, will help SHM ‘accelerate its holding and quarantine operations for non-human primates,’ the company said in a release, while supporting a planned $396 million complex in Bainbridge, Georgia, that, at peak capacity, would hold 30,000 long-tailed macaques. This is at least triple the number currently housed at any other US breeding facility.”
“[PETA] reported last month the findings of its investigation that identified a ‘secretly orchestrated deal between monkey importer Charles River Laboratories and SIMI United States, LLC, a company newly incorporated by the executives behind Safer Human Medicine.’ . . . Charles River Laboratories previously proposed building a mega monkey-holding facility in southeast Texas, but abandoned those plans last year after encountering opposition from local leaders and residents.” 📰 Full Story →
Malliotakis introduces new act to cut animal testing
Brooklyn Eagle Staff, Brooklyn Eagle, 3/6/2025
“U.S. rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY-11) last week introduced legislation In Congress that would ban more animal testing in federal labs, named the Safeguard Pets, Animals, and Research Entities (SPARE) Act, co-sponsored by Florida Rep. Aaron Bean. The SPARE Act would establish a three-year timeline for phasing out biomedical, cosmetic, toxicity and psychological testing on animals in government-run or federally funded labs, institutions and agencies . . . The act would also fund efforts to rehabilitate and adopt out former lab animals, as well as research into non-animal testing alternative technologies.”
“Malliotakis in a press statement described animal medical testing as inhumane and unnecessary, writing that the act is intended to ‘end the cruel and unnecessary spending on animal experiments that have wasted billions of tax dollars and inhumanely kept hundreds of thousands of innocent animals in captivity to be tortured and sentenced to painful death.’” 📰 Full Story →
Non-Animal & Human-Relevant Research News: February 2025
Rise for Animals, 3/4/2025
The latest in non-animal and human-relevant research news: 3D tumoroids advance cancer research; 3D-printed lung chip replaces animal testing; Multi-organ drug testing model debuts; Europe’s largest organ-on-a-chip facility opens; and more. 📰 Full Story →