Victory! President Signs Groundbreaking FDA Modernization Act 2.0

Update (December 27, 2022): We did it! The FDA Modernization Act 2.0, added to the omnibus spending bill, was just passed and has been signed into law by President Biden.

This signals a radical shift in the way drugs and treatments are developed. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will be allowed to consider superior, non-animal drug testing methods, instead of requiring deadly and scientifically bogus animal tests. It’s a change that mirrors a request that PETA scientists made of the FDA in 2020.

PETA and many partner organizations worked hard for this victory. But we couldn’t have done it without your e-mails and calls to your members of Congress urging them to support the bill.

PETA also thanks Sens. Cory Booker and Rand Paul for introducing the bill in the Senate and Rep. Vern Buchanan for introducing it in the House.

Now let’s get that dinosaur of an agency the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to get with the program: Please let your members of Congress know that PETA’s groundbreaking Research Modernization Deal outlines how NIH can stop throwing away billions on failed animal experiments.

Original post:

PETA’s undercover investigation into laboratory supplier Envigo’s dog-breeding factory led to the release of 4,000 beagles to be adopted into loving homes. But this massive victory is where the real work begins. We must put an end to tests on animals—or else more dogs, cats, mice, monkeys, rabbits, and others will suffer and die in laboratories.

A new bill introduced in Congress is a crucial first step. PETA is working hard to get it passed, and we need you to urge your U.S. legislators to support it. The bill mirrors a request that PETA scientists made of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in May 2020.

The bipartisan FDA Modernization Act would change the agency’s arcane rules that require deadly animal testing even for treatments for diseases that the animals themselves don’t naturally contract. Many of these tests were developed 70 years ago—long before we had organs-on-a-chip, three-dimensional tissue models, supercomputers, and artificial intelligence. This bill represents a step toward persuading the FDA to consider and approve these more sophisticated methods. Although it could now approve medications without the use of animal tests, it has refused to do so. This bill would provide statutory language to make that change.

HR 2565/S 2952 represents a shift in the way drugs and treatments are developed—already proved to work to curb the recent pandemic—and it supports our larger efforts to implement a strategy to end failed animal experiments, as PETA scientists outline in our groundbreaking Research Modernization Deal.