FDA Requests Proposals to Replace Animals in Pharmaceutical Tests: PETA Statement

For Immediate Release:
December 2, 2025

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA scientist Jeffrey Brown regarding the Food and Drug Administration’s call on the pharmaceutical industry to propose tests to replace primates and other animals in experiments: 

After years of persuasion, evidence sharing, and recent meetings with Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials, PETA scientists today applaud the agency’s proposal to streamline drug testing by recommending and encouraging pharmaceutical developers to replace primates, dogs, pigs, and other animals who are routinely killed in painful tests to meet FDA requirements. Today’s FDA announcement is a lifeline for long-tailed macaques. Testing a single antibody drug can use and kill more than 100 monkeys—the equivalent of erasing two entire troops of endangered macaques in one fell swoop—for tests the agency now says may be replaced entirely. This is one of the first federal reforms that will translate directly into fewer captures, fewer shipments, and fewer endangered macaques sacrificed for data modern science can deliver without them.

As the agency noted earlier this year, a specific category of drugs—monoclonal antibodies—is a starting point for this new approach. Now, the FDA has invited the entire industry to actively bring their animal replacement approaches forward. Every pharmaceutical manufacturer now has a duty to support the agency’s proposal, both by affirming their agreement with it and putting its recommendations into practice. As a developer of a candidate therapeutic monoclonal antibody that has suggested these and other animal replacement opportunities to the FDA, PETA scientists are happy to support the FDA and any pharmaceutical manufacturer in need of assistance in rising to the agency’s challenge.

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.