The Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has committed to ending testing on mammals within the decade after the Biden administration canceled the phase-out deadlines.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the news on Thursday, saying he is “absolutely committed to making sure EPA gets back on track with the historic goal set out during President Trump’s first term in office.”
“Unlike the previous administration, the Trump EPA will not delay scientific progress on developing alternatives to animal testing,” he continued in a statement. “We will pursue this goal while adhering to the law and the highest quality scientific standards.”
During President Donald Trump’s first term, the agency signed a directive to prioritize efforts to reduce animal testing and committed to reducing testing on mammals by 30 percent by 2025 and to “eliminate it completely by 2035,” a spokesperson told the Washington Times last April.
“The Biden administration halted progress on these efforts by delaying compliance deadlines. Administrator Zeldin is wholly committed to getting the agency back on track to eliminating animal testing,” the spokesperson said at the time.
On Thursday, EPA officials said the 2035 deadline has been brought back, and noted that the Biden administration’s actions caused a delay on “developing alternatives that would save more animals from experimentation.”
A “minimal amount” of animal testing is still required to “support statutorily mandated regulatory responsibilities to test certain chemicals,” officials explained, adding that the EPA will work to further reduce it however possible.
Zeldin celebrated the move in a post on social media, writing, “We are now BACK ON TRACK.”
In November, watchdog group White Coat Waste Project (WCW) celebrated the EPA for meeting its target to slash mammal testing by 30 percent in 2025 as the EPA, Breitbart News reported.
WCW joined the EPA for its announcement on Thursday, writing that they are “proud to have been instrumental in delivering this victory for taxpayers and innocent animals alongside EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin today.”
The group added that they first worked with the Trump EPA to launch this plan in 2019, “but we exposed that the Biden administration abandoned the plan and doubled down on wasteful and inhumane experiments like ‘forcing lab mice to breathe handgun emissions, making obese rats inhale wildfire smoke, and poisoning puppies with pesticides.’”
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.
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