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.
Life After Labs: Meet Martin, Lulu, Booker, Izzy, & Abigail
Rise for Animals, 9/11/2025
Meet five survivors of animal research — Martin the cat, Lulu the guinea pig, Booker the beagle, and goat sisters Izzy and Abigail — who are now thriving at New Life Animal Sanctuary. Supported by Rise for Animals, their stories show what’s possible when animals are freed from labs and treated as the individuals they always were. 📰 Full Story →
Ridglan Update: USDA Admits Not Understanding Its Own Rules
Rise for Animals, 9/9/2025
The state says it can’t act. The feds say they don’t understand. Meanwhile, dogs suffer inside Ridglan Farms.
They say it’s “highly regulated” — but it’s a system built to protect industry, not animals. 📰 Full Story →
Ridglan Farms speaks out as Dane Co. Board delays vote on controversial dog breeder
Shaina Nijhawan, 15 WMTV, 9/4/2025
“Dane County Board vote over the future of a controversial Blue Mounds dog breeder was delayed Thursday night — but that didn’t stop a flood of testimony and the facility’s first direct response. Resolution 119 calls on state regulators to revoke the facility’s commercial license and place its more than 2,000 dogs into protective custody. Supervisors were set to vote, but after touring the farm Wednesday, and with a separate state enforcement hearing also delayed, they decided to hold off until next month.”
“Resolution 119 is now scheduled for a vote on October 23 . . . Meanwhile, the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) has postponed its own enforcement conference with Ridglan Farms until September 22 — a proceeding that could bring penalties and possibly influence the facility’s future.” 📰 Full Story →
A visit to Monkey Island: ‘It’s like another world.’
David Abel, Boston Globe, 9/5/2025
“For nearly a century, Cayo Santiago, a controversial preserve known as Monkey Island, has been home to one of the world’s largest and oldest research stations for free-ranging rhesus macaques.”
“The work has also stirred protests and complaints to the National Institutes of Health, which has spent tens of millions of dollars over the years subsidizing much of the research center’s budget. Last year, the US Department of Agriculture fined the center $16,500 for a range of violations, which included one incident in which an employee in a vehicle accidentally ran over a monkey, and another in which staff disinfecting off-island cages used too much undiluted chlorine that led to the deaths of two macaques.”
“‘What doesn’t get talked about is how regularly those monkeys are rounded up, transported to the mainland, and sold into the biomedical pipeline,’ said Lisa Jones-Engel, a primate scientist who serves as PETA’s senior science adviser. ‘It is a supply chain feeding an outdated and ethically bankrupt system.’” 📰 Full Story →
PETA claims UL’s New Iberia Research Center violated federal rules, asks USDA to investigate
Stephen Marcantel, The Acadiana Advocate, 9/4/2025
“[PETA] is claiming the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s New Iberia Research Center violated federal animal welfare regulations when working with a trucking company to ship monkeys to a facility in Nevada. The animal rights organization is urging the U.S. Department of Agriculture to investigate the university and JKL Secure Freight Services, the trucking company, after the two allegedly failed to obtain valid health certificates.”
“A USDA-accredited veterinarian is required to examine primates no more than 10 days before they cross state lines, according to PETA. Documents obtained by the organization showed an inspection occurred on Dec. 12, 2024 — 28 days before the monkeys were sent to Charles River Laboratories. The need for timely inspection helps lessen the spread of tuberculosis among primate populations . . . ‘We urge the USDA to investigate these apparent violations and take swift, decisive action, including issuing citations to both registrants for each of the AWRs violated,’ the letter read.” 📰 Full Story →
Sanctuary Rescuing 47 Beagles from Chinese Testing Lab
Cassandra MacDonald, Gateway Pundit, 9/6/2025
“In a daring and costly mission dubbed Operation Freedom Fetchers, Wyoming’s Kindness Ranch Animal Sanctuary has begun the process of rescuing 47 beagles from a research facility in China — dogs believed to be connected to American-owned or funded experiments.”
“‘It’s about exposing the secrecy and cruelty of billion-dollar institutions that profit off the suffering of man’s best friend,’” [sanctuary director John Ramer] said in a Facebook post.” 📰 Full Story →
A Meaningful Last Gift for All Sentient Beings
Peter Singer & Benjamin L. Sievers, Project Syndicate, 09/08/2025
“At the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), a program called Last Gift offers terminally ill patients the opportunity to help create more effective treatments. Their special circumstances transform the usual risk-benefit calculus of joining a clinical study of an untested drug. Researchers can ask them to consider consenting to being research participants in ways that they would not ask healthier people with long life expectancies, and terminally ill patients may choose to give that consent when others would be less likely to do so.”
“Terminally ill patients can offer their own bodies to contribute to this growing effort to make drug testing more human-relevant, generating data on how people, rather than beagles or mice, respond to new treatments, while also reducing the suffering currently inflicted on laboratory animals . . . Initiatives like Last Gift have the potential to benefit all sentient beings – humans and animals.” 📰 Full Story →
SC’s Monkey Island breeding operation comes under House committee scrutiny
Marilyn Thompson, The Post and Courier, 9/9/2025
“A key congressional committee wants federal health officials to justify the continued breeding of primates on Morgan Island, a secluded South Carolina barrier island that is home to more than 3,000 rhesus monkeys used in federal research. The language is included in a House Appropriations Committee funding proposal released Sept. 8 for the National Institutes of Health. It is the first time a congressional committee with spending power has questioned the primate breeding ground, as pressure grows in Congress to eliminate taxpayer-funded experiments that use animals as test subjects.”
“The report asks the agency to assess the scientific need for the operation off the coast of Beaufort and to report back on the findings.” 📰 Full Story →
Federal government adopts new strategy to reduce animal testing
Elizabeth Thompson, CBC News, 9/11/2025
“The federal government has launched a new strategy to reduce the number of animals used in regulatory laboratory testing across Canada — a strategy that some experts estimate could result in thousands fewer animals each year being subjected to painful or toxic tests. The strategy, published online in mid-July, calls for the government to identify and promote the use of scientifically viable alternatives to chemical testing under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act on vertebrate animals such as cats, dogs, mice and rabbits. However, it wouldn’t affect the use of animals for testing other things like drugs, medical products and food products.”
“[Amy Clippinger, a managing director for PETA] [] questions whether the federal government will devote the funding and staff time necessary for the strategy to be successful. ‘”Otherwise, it’s just another document online that doesn’t result in real change,’ she said.” 📰 Full Story →
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