On January 29, 2025, Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ), Eric Schmitt (R-MO), Rand Paul (R-KY), Angus King (I-ME), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), John Kennedy (R-LA), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), and Roger Marshall (R-KS) reintroduced the FDA Modernization Act 3.0. (This bill is currently awaiting a bill number; we will update this page when it becomes available.)
The FDA Modernization Act 3.0 aims to require the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) to implement the FDA Modernization Act 2.0 — which Congress passed in 2022 but which the FDA has yet to honor — by revising FDA regulations to remove its requirement for animal research.
Late last year, the Senate voted to pass the prior version of the FDA Modernization Act 3.0. But, despite widespread bipartisan support, the bill did not pass the House of Representatives before it expired at the end of the 118th Congress on January 3, 2025.
The U.S. is the world’s largest funder of animal research despite long knowing and even publicly acknowledging that the use of other-than-human animals for research intended to benefit humans is both misguided and ineffective. It, therefore, remains incumbent upon Congress to act in the best interests of all by directing the FDA to explicitly remove the requirement for animal research from its regulations. Doing so, Congress would act in furtherance of not only current law but also established science (which has proven animal research to be neither necessary for nor beneficial to human welfare).