Administrator Zeldin Gets EPA Back on Track to Eliminate Animal Testing After Biden Admin Halted Phase Out

Administrator Zeldin Gets EPA Back on Track to Eliminate Animal Testing After Biden Admin Halted Phase Out

January 22, 2026

WASHINGTON - Today, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the agency was getting back on track with reducing mammalian animal testing and recommitting to the ambitious goal laid out during the first Trump Administration to eliminate the practice by 2035. The Biden Administration canceled the agency's animal testing phase-out deadlines, delaying scientific progress on developing alternatives that would save more animals from experimentation.

Since his time serving in Congress, Administrator Zeldin has been a leader in working to reduce animal testing. Under President Trump and Administrator Zeldin's leadership, EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP) will prioritize developing and implementing high-quality alternatives to reduce testing on vertebrate mammals, like rabbits, mice, rats, and dogs, to align with regulatory requirements, the high bar of gold standard science, and EPA's Make America Healthy Again agenda.

"I'm 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. We will pursue this goal while adhering to the law and the highest quality scientific standards," said EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin.

While a minimal amount of animal testing is still required to support statutorily mandated regulatory responsibilities to test certain chemicals, EPA will work in targeted ways to further reduce it however possible and collaborate with other government agencies, researchers, and advocates to develop and validate the use of alternative methods for toxicity testing.

The Trump EPA has already made great strides undoing the animal testing damage of the Biden years and meeting the ambitious 2035 goal.

EPA implemented the agency's first-ever lab animal adoption program in April 2025 at one of its premiere research laboratories in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Several animals, including two rabbits, no longer needed for research purposes have been adopted by staff. EPA's Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions (OASES), which operates animal care facilities, will continue working to get more animals into loving homes.

Likewise, the number of rodents in OASES' care has fallen from 466 rodents in April of 2025 to just 41 as of mid-November.

For the first time ever, EPA's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT) used high-quality alternative scientific methods to animal testing in its cancer evaluations for dibutyl phthalate and di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, sparing an estimated 1,600 mice and rats from undergoing lab experiments.

EPA also developed an alternative non-animal testing framework for identifying skin irritation and corrosion hazards in chemicals that describes the agency's preference for studies for using alternatives to testing in live rabbits. This new framework supports EPA's mandate under the Toxic Substances Control Act to identify and develop alternatives to animal testing.

Leading On NAMs

In 2019, during the first Trump Administration, EPA issued a memo laying out the bold goal of completely eliminating all mammalian study requests and funding by 2035, including those performed by third parties. This goal is supported by recent scientific trends and technological advances and the wishes of Congress. The 2016 amendments to TSCA added an explicit requirement for EPA to promote the development and incorporation of methods that reduce or replace the use of vertebrate animals in agency scientific testing, otherwise known as New Approach Methods (NAMs).

NAMs refers to technologies, methodologies, or approaches that can be used instead of vertebrate animal testing to inform chemical hazard and risk assessments. These include in vitro tests, in chemico assays, and in silico models. NAMs are functionally equivalent to "alternatives" to mammal testing.

The Trump EPA is well positioned to use NAMs to reduce animal testing requirements when appropriate under existing law and scientifically defensible. While animal testing has played a role in scientific advancement, NAMs offer many potential benefits over traditional animal testing methods:

• NAMs can provide more relevant, rapid, and cost-effective information for evaluating human adverse outcomes than findings in laboratory animals. 
• Studies based on animal testing are not always reproducible, while NAM-based scientific tests are repeatable and reproducible.
• NAMs position EPA to do even more gold standard science, allowing the agency to gather and make decisions based on test endpoints, life stages, disease states, and health outcomes that cannot be done in laboratory animals.

OCSPP is committed to using a three-pronged strategy to ensure the agency stays on track with phasing out animal testing and meeting President Trump's 2035 goal:

1. Identify NAMs that can currently be used as an alternative to traditional animal testing.
2. Conduct a comprehensive review of agency guidance and the Code of Federal Regulations to provide flexibility in fulfilling data requirements for toxicity assessments and issuing waivers to further reduce animal testing requirements.
3. Encourage external researchers and data providers to use NAMs and apply for animal testing waivers whenever possible.

The scientific community is moving away from animal testing, and huge advances in developing NAMs have been made in recent years and are expected to accelerate. The Trump EPA will work to be at the forefront of developing and incorporating advances in NAMs into its scientific framework to ensure agency assessments and scientific work uses high quality, gold standard science.