Animal Experimentation Lobby’s China Outsourcing Scare is Its Latest Lie, PETA Says

For Immediate Release:
August 31, 2026

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

In a blistering take-down of the animal experimentation industry’s bogus claim that the U.S. will lose research dollars to China if cruel and deadly tests on animals are banned or limited domestically, PETA dismantles the animal experimentation industry’s naked attempt to keep its pockets filled with taxpayer cash in a letter in The Economist.

Fearful of losing public funding, animal experimenters and their paid lobbyists have ratcheted up their misinformation campaign about the effectiveness of animal studies and falsely portray opposition to animal experimentation as a partisan issue.

But 15 years of scientific data show that experimenting on animals consistently fails to produce treatments for humans. At least 95 percent of new medications that test safe and effective in animals fail in human trials.

“Lobbyists for the animal experimentation industry are pressing a well-worn panic button, claiming animal studies will be outsourced to China if they end in America,” writes PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “As American agencies choose organoids, in silico computational models and the like over animals, there will be no need to outsource anything. Indeed, China has put out a call to scientists from around the world for advice on non-animal methods. PETA‘s scientists are obliging.”

The federally-funded National Primate Research Center network, for instance, has failed for 40 years to develop an HIV vaccine, in the process killing tens of thousands of monkeys, who are physiologically incapable of developing HIV. Of the dozens of test vaccines developed, only five have been approved for human clinical trials. All have failed.

Other areas of research are similarly dismal. Treatments for sepsis and stroke that were developed in animals have a 100 percent failure rate in humans. Treatments for Alzheimer’s disease have a 99.6 percent failure rate. Cancer,

96 percent.

Contrary to pro-animal testing rhetoric, animal protection is a bipartisan issue. PETA has for many years worked with politicians on both sides of the aisle, beginning decades ago with Republican Senators Bob Dole and Bob Smith, and Democratic Senators Alan Cranston and Joe Biden.

PETA’s Research Modernization NOW provides a roadmap for phasing out the use of animals in research and has been endorsed by dozens of scientists, doctors, and other experts.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.

Tas Bruner