The taxpayer watchdog White Coat Waste Project (WCW) is celebrating the Trump administration’s EPA meeting its target to slash mammal testing by 30 percent in 2025 as the EPA touts its top accomplishments since Trump took office.
This was actually a goal outlined by former EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, who led the agency in the first Trump administration. At the time, he said of the memo he signed, “Today’s memo directs the agency to aggressively reduce animal testing, including reducing animal study requests and funding 30% by 2025 and completely eliminating them by 2035.”
He added, “We are also awarding $4.25 million to advance the research and development of alternative test methods for evaluating the safety of chemicals that will minimize, and hopefully eliminate, the need for animal testing.”
The Trump administration’s EPA in the second term, led by Administrator Lee Zeldin, also made this a clear priority earlier this year after the Biden administration halted progress on this goal.
“Under President Trump’s first term, EPA signed a directive to prioritize efforts to reduce animal testing and committed to reducing testing on mammals by 30% by 2025 and to eliminate it completely by 2035,” agency spokesperson Molly Vaseliou told the Washington Times earlier this year.
“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,” she added.
The testing was brutal, including an experiment forcing rats and mice to experience “extreme heat exposures” and “simulated wildfire smoke, and conditions such as solitary confinement to gain information on the impacts of wildfires and climate change, according to a research brief compiled by the White Coat Waste Project,” as reported by the Washington Examiner.
Despite roadblocks from the Biden administration, it appears this goal – to slash testing – has been met. This comes as the EPA celebrates top accomplishments in the last 300 days. All of the highlights can be found here.
“Reinstating Trump 45’s plan to cut animal tests and retire the survivors has been a top priority for White Coat Waste since day one of the new Administration. We commend President Trump and EPA Administrator Zeldin for working with White Coat Waste and keeping their promise to taxpayers and pet owners by shutting down animal labs during their first 300 days in office,” Anthony Bellotti, president and founder at WCW, told Breitbart News in a statement.
He continued:
Thanks to White Coat Waste’s efforts and the Trump administration’s outstanding leadership, the EPA appears to be back on track to meeting—and potentially exceeding—the 2025 benchmark set by former Trump EPA chief Andrew Wheeler of cutting animal lab funding by 30 percent.
White Coat Waste worked with the first Trump Administration to slash tests on dogs, rabbits, and all other mammals by 30 percent by 2025, fully eliminate them by 2035, and adopt out animal testing survivors.
When the Biden Administration revoked the deadlines and even killed rabbits slated for retirement, legacy groups in the animal rights establishment stayed silent. But White Coat Waste blew the whistle—President Trump listened—and now he’s taken action.
White Coat Waste also led the only bipartisan campaign that united Congressional Republicans and Democrats to pass legislation directing the EPA to restore its phase-out timeline and animal retirement plans. We’re proud that media outlets ranging from Breitbart to the New York Times have credited White Coat Waste with leading the campaign to cut EPA’s wasteful spending and retire EPA’s lab survivors.
The solution is simple: Stop the money. Stop the madness.
Breitbart News also obtained an exclusive statement from Wheeler, Trump’s former EPA administrator and current volunteer adviser for WCW.
“As a lifelong animal lover and President Trump’s former EPA Administrator, I applaud Lee Zeldin and the EPA for reviving my first-of-its-kind plan to end cruel, costly, and ineffective animal testing and retire lab animals,” Wheeler said in a statement.
“I was shocked when, instead of attempting to meet my 2025 and 2035 benchmarks for replacing animal testing with superior alternatives, the Biden-Harris Administration completely canceled the timeline soon after President Trump and I left office. The Trump EPA’s decision to prioritize animal testing cuts is sparing animals from painful and outdated tests, protecting public health, and saving millions of tax dollars. I’m grateful to my friends at White Coat Waste for keeping this issue on the administration’s agenda,” he added.
This comes as WCW works alongside lawmakers to expose and end cruel animal testing. Over the summer, for instance, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), introduced a bill to defund painful National Institutes of Health (NIH) testing on dogs and cats following more revelations from WCW, as Breitbart News detailed.
