Here’s a roundup of the 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.
Discrimination *Is* the Cage — Help Us Break It Down
Rise for Animals, 6/4/2025
Our work to free animals from labs is one part of a broader fight — a fight against institutionalized discrimination and oppression, a fight for justice grounded in moral principles. 📰 Full Story →
⚠️ Take action! Tell your U.S. Representative that cold-blooded animals — including cephalopods, fish, reptiles, and amphibians — deserve recognition as “animals” under the law. Send your letter now.
Cephalopods Passed a Cognitive Test Designed for Human Children
Michelle Tarr, Nature, 5/30/2025
“An eye-opening experiment on cephalopods reinforces why it is so important for us to not underestimate animal intelligence.”
“Their ability to learn, anticipate future rewards, and adapt their behavior” presents “a fascinating example of how very different lifestyles in very different species can result in similar behaviors and cognitive abilities. Evidence of ‘episodic-like memory’ has been found in cuttlefish, and in 2024 scientists reported the first observation of the creature forming false membories.” 📰 Full Story →
Is animal testing even needed anymore?
Will Walkey and Meghna Chakrabarti, WBUR, 6/4/2025
Per Dr. Donald Ingber, the founding director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and founder of Emulate, Inc., a leading manufacturer of organ-on-chip systems: “Right now big companies will spend, you know, hundreds of millions on the drug development, tens of millions in a big clinical trial, [and] almost always fail . . . You could flip [the failure rate] on the head with [non-animal methods like] stem cells, patient-derived cells, organoids, organs-on-chips. Select a small group of patients that are very similar. Test the drugs for efficacy, test for toxicity. Use them for a small trial — faster, cheaper, more likelihood to succeed. It would be a total game changer, I think.” 📰 Full Story →
Navy halts dog and cat experiments; PETA writes Hegseth about US taxpayer-funded animal tests
Alexandra Koch, FOX News, 5/30/2025
“[PETA] penned a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Navy Secretary John Phelan Thursday, thanking the Trump administration for its ban on Navy-funded dog and cat experiments announced this week and requesting a broader ban on all animal testing in all military branches.”
“‘In addition to this termination, I’m directing the surgeon general of the Navy to conduct a comprehensive review of all medical research programs to ensure they align with ethical guidelines, scientific necessity, and our core values of integrity and readiness’ [said Phelan]. PETA on Thursday further urged the Department of Defense to conduct a similar comprehensive, agency-wide audit aimed at rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in cruel and outdated animal experimentation.” 📰 Full Story →
How the FBI and Big Ag Started Treating Animal Rights Activists as Bioterrorists
Matt Sledge, The Intercept, 6/2/2025
“A coalition of transparency and animal rights groups on Monday released that letter, along with a cache of government documents, to highlight the tight links between law enforcement and agriculture industry groups. Activists say those documents show an unseemly relationship between the FBI and Big Ag.”
“Industry groups did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement, the FBI defended its relationship with ‘members of the private sector.’ . . . Emails obtained by Property of the People suggest that the FBI regularly shared information with the Animal Agriculture Alliance, as both sought to spotlight the threat of animal rights activists.”
“Animal rights activists have long said that federal law enforcement seems determined to put them in the same category as Al Qaeda . . . ‘Instead of taking responsibility for what they are doing, they are trying to blame us. Of course, it’s always a shocking thing when nonviolent activists are called terrorists or framed as terrorists,’ . . . ‘It just all feels backwards.’” 📰 Full Story →
Alum sues Macalester over animal cruelty concerns in lab experiments
Erin Adler, The Minnesota Star Tribune, 6/3/2025
“A Macalester College alum and medical doctor who has spent decades trying to end the use of animals in scientific research says the St. Paul school is lying when it claims to use the highest ethical standards for animal welfare in its labs.”
“Dr. Neal Barnard, a Maryland resident, filed a lawsuit Tuesday in Hennepin County District Court against Macalester, alleging it has misrepresented its program to the public by using live animals like rats in psychology class labs . . . Macalester officials have confirmed that they’re still conducting animal experiments based on the work of a famous psychologist who invented a device called the ‘Skinner box’ in the 1920s, the lawsuit said . . . In Skinner box experiments, animals are deprived of food or water beforehand and may receive a reward, like food pellets, or a punishment, like an electrical shock, for pushing the levers.”
“In the lawsuit, Barnard said that, over many years practicing as a psychiatrist — he’s worked in psychiatry wards, in private practice and is currently an adjunct faculty member at the George Washington University School of Medicine — he’s found that Skinner’s findings had ‘no relevance in any of these settings and were rarely, if ever, discussed in relation to any aspect of psychiatric treatment.’” 📰 Full Story →
EU Sets 2026 Roadmap to Advance Non-Animal Testing for Cosmetics and Chemicals
Global Cosmetics News, 6/3/2025
“The European Commission has confirmed plans to finalize its ‘Save Cruelty Free Cosmetics’ roadmap by early 2026, setting the stage for a gradual transition toward non-animal testing in chemical safety assessments.”
“The roadmap will lay out structured actions and concrete recommendations for integrating New Approach Methodologies (NAMS) across 15 legislative areas that still rely on animal testing . . . This initiative marks a significant step toward a more cruelty-free future for EU cosmetics and chemical industries, reflecting regulatory momentum and public pressure to eliminate animal testing while ensuring safety standards through validated alternative approaches….” 📰 Full Story →
Research without lab animals? New tech is making it possible
Avery Elizabeth Hurt, ScienceNewsExplores, 6/4/2025
“Animals are not perfect models for people. Or as [NIH employee] Nicole Kleinstreuer puts it, ‘We’re not 150-pound rats.’ . . . Animals, she notes, often respond quite differently than people do to drugs and other substances. Aspirin, for instance, is safe for most adults. It relieves pain. And in some people it can help prevent heart attacks. But this drug can be toxic to rats. Other drugs are the opposite: They may work safely in lab animals but not in people. By some estimates, more than nine in every 10 cancer drugs that showed promise in animals did not help humans.”
“Kleinstreuer helped plan a program that will spend several million dollars over the next five to 10 years to fund more research on alternatives to lab animals. These changes will make better systems based on the biology of humans, she says. And that, she adds, ‘is just better science.’” 📰 Full Story →
Pressure mounts on UW animal research
Bill Leuders, Isthmus, 6/5/2025
“In one experiment funded by the UW-Madison’s Food Research Institute (FRI), mice were literally forced to eat shit and die. As described by the animal rights group PETA, ‘the mice were force-fed the parasite-infested feces of other mice.’ . . . Another FRI-funded study that caught PETA’s attention involved feeding pregnant monkeys whipping cream contaminated with listeria bacteria, then cutting them open so their dead babies could be dissected.”
“ . . . these are ‘just a subset of all the animal experiments FRI contributes to. FRI uses thousands of animals per year, and there likely are ongoing projects.’ A report obtained by PETA shows the FRI used 3,614 mice in testing last year.”
“ . . . 15 of FRI’s corporate sponsors, after hearing from PETA, have either stopped funding the research center entirely or shifted their sponsorship to a new fund that cannot be used for animal testing.” 📰 Full Story →
Science Isn’t Neutral. It’s Political — and It’s Violent.
Rise for Animals, 6/2/2025
Science is not some pure, apolitical pursuit of truth. It’s shaped by human decisions, human ideologies, and human hierarchies. In other words, it’s inherently political. 📰 Full Story →
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