"The Environmental Protection Agency is moving forward with a plan to sharply reduce and ultimately phase out experimental testing on lab animals. In an undated internal memo sent in late June to assistant administrators, EPA chief Andrew Wheeler explained that the agency will cut its funding for experiments on mammals in half by 2025. The memo, which was reviewed by The Intercept, also said that the EPA plans to stop using mammal studies for the approval of new chemicals by 2035 and that it will aim to eliminate all mammal studies. Under the new plan, any animal study done after that point will require approval by the EPA administrator.
The EPA is promoting alternative methods to gauge the threats posed by chemicals, such as computer modeling and tests on cells, which have been increasingly used in recent years. Yet no legal limits have ever been set using these alternative methods alone. Without the tests on rats, mice, and rabbits currently used to gauge the toxicity of chemicals and set safe levels, public health and environmental advocates worry that the policy shift will leave EPA unable to limit chemicals at all. “It effectively will mean you can’t regulate,” said Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The internal announcement that EPA would speed the move away from animal testing coincided with the creation of a new section on the agency’s website that was published last week. Titled “Alternative Test Methods and Strategies to Reduce Vertebrate Animal Testing,” the newly released material details the EPA’s efforts to “reduce and replace testing on vertebrates.” On March 14, Wheeler signaled that he would be making the shift in a speech, broadcast internally to EPA staff, in which he described the animal testing issue as “important to me personally.”"
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