EPA Launches Lab Animal Adoption Program Amid Cuts to In-House Research

The EPA is now offering zebrafish and rats for private adoption that were formerly used by the agency in laboratory testing. The new program will eventually include rabbits and mice. The EPA announced in April, as reported by The HighWire, that it would phase out animal testing, along with the FDA. The latest announcement has received praise from the White Coat Waste Project for moving away from animal laboratory testing, which often includes experiments that have been called “barbaric” during congressional hearings.

The Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) obtained the internal documents and reported on the latest adoption program last week. PEER Science Policy Director Kyla Bennett said the latest efforts to scale back research at the EPA are equivalent to an “ill-advised scientific self-lobotomy.”

PEER reported that there are about 20,000 animals in EPA labs, which are used in experiments regarding the safety of environmental pollutants. “EPA is abandoning its status as a premier scientific organization,” Bennett said. “Scientific research is vital to EPA’s core mission of protecting public health and the environment, but that mission is quickly eroding.”

Anthony Bellotti, President and Founder of the White Coat Waste Project, said, “Reinstating the EPA’s animal testing phase-out and its lab animal retirement policy has been a top priority for White Coat Waste since day one of the new Trump Administration. We applaud President Trump and EPA Administrator Zeldin for keeping their promise to taxpayers and pet owners.”

“White Coat Waste worked with the first Trump Administration to eliminate tests on dogs, rabbits, and all other mammals by 2035 and to retire animal testing survivors,” Bellotti continued. “When the Biden Administration secretly revoked the 2035 deadline and killed rabbits slated for retirement, we blew the whistle—not the legacy animal groups who stayed silent while the killing resumed behind closed doors.”

There were several studies that were uncovered by the White Coat Waste Project and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) audit of federal agencies that were cancelled for being wasteful and abusive. In one study, researchers cut the backs of male cats, exposing their spinal cords, and subjected them to electrical shocks for up to 10 minutes at a time. The purpose was to see if the cats received an erection, but the cats experienced lower body paralysis after having their spinal cords severed.

The push to ban animal testing is not only based on animal welfare concerns, but also on the efficacy of the experiments. “The failure rate for the translation of drugs from animal testing to human treatments remains at over 92%, where it has been for the past few decades,” researchers wrote in a 2023 review. “The majority of these failures are due to unexpected toxicity – that is, safety issues revealed in human trials that were not apparent in animal tests – or lack of efficacy.”

Bennett and PEER criticize the administration’s move to replace the Office of Research 7 Development (ORD) with the Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions (OASES), resulting in the elimination of about three-quarters of ORD staffing. E&E News by Politico reports that the downsizing efforts will cover 50-75% of the 1,540 positions, or between 770 and 1,155. This downsizing plan was halted on May 22, when a California district court issued a preliminary injunction that is still currently in effect.

The press release from PEER states that if the downsizing effort succeeds, it would cause the EPA to become more reliant on research from chemical companies, “which is often framed to mask, rather than identify, potential health and environmental risks.” PEER believes the EPA will be “far less capable of evaluating the toxicological effect of chemicals, especially complex chemicals with several thousand variations, such as PFAS.” PEER also insists that long-term research on chemical pollutants relies upon the use of lab animals.

In a May op-ed for Newsweek, Administrator Zeldin said Americans deserve a balance between environmental protection and economic prosperity. “The Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention will gain more than 130 scientific, bioinformatic, technical, and information technology experts to address the substantial backlog of new chemical and pesticide reviews from the previous administration,” Zeldin wrote. “This influx of expertise will accelerate our ability to evaluate risk exposure while also allowing us to gain the tools needed to advance new priorities like a PFAS (chemicals that persist in the environment and may cause negative health effects) testing strategy—an issue I’ve championed since my days in Congress.”

As a congressional representative, Zeldin was a cosponsor of legislation for animal welfare bills, including a bill to halt dog experiments at the Veterans Affair Department and to discontinue animal testing for cosmetic products. Kindness Ranch, a Wyoming animal sanctuary, has previously offered to rehabilitate and rehome animals that have been retired from research programs within the EPA and other federal government agencies at no expense to taxpayers.