Congressional Subcommittee Hearing Targets Animal Research

By: Galen Cobb
Thursday, February 13, 2025
On February 6, Representative Nancy Mace [R-SC-01], Chairwoman of the House Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation, held a hearing titled “Transgender Lab Rats and Poisoned Puppies: Oversight of Taxpayer Funded Animal Cruelty.” The hearing featured both prepared testimony and Q&A with three witnesses: 

• Justin Goodman, Senior Vice President, White Coat Waste Project (full written testimony);
• Paul A. Locke, JD, DPH, Professor, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (full written testimony); and 
• Elizabeth Baker, Esq., Director of Research Policy, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (full written testimony). 

All three witnesses have direct ties to either animal rights lobbying organizations or groups dedicated to promoting non-animal alternatives in research. 

During the hearing, the policy discussion focused on a political, rather than scientific, assessment of the animal research conducted with federal funding. Highlighted examples of research primarily covered topics related to broader political touchstones, including gender identity, fetal tissue research, zoonotic disease tracking in animals, and animal research abroad. Each witness made a call to end animal research.

Justin Goodman criticized the U.S. government for spending $20 billion annually, a valuation determined by WCW, on “ineffective animal studies” without proper oversight. He advocated for defunding foreign animal labs, especially in China, and proposed suspending the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) grants.

Paul Locke emphasized the need for more accurate, human-relevant research models and called for federal support to transition towards non-animal alternatives to strengthen the U.S.’s leadership in science.

Elizabeth Baker highlighted the “failure of animal models” in predicting human responses and pushed for transparency in federal funding for animal research. 

Witnesses highlighted specific legislation and policy changes that would eliminate or create barriers to animal research. Their recommendations centered on three themes: 1) Defunding animal research institutions and eliminating grant funding opportunities; 2) Reprioritizing funding towards non-animal research alternatives; and 3) Creating greater regulatory burden on animal researchers and grant funders through additional reporting requirements.

Several high-profile animal research facilities, including the National Primate Research Centers and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service’s Human Nutrition Research Centers, were targeted by both Baker and Goodman with calls to terminate their funding. Baker claimed that research involving nonhuman primates is unlikely to generate human-relevant outcomes due to the “myriad of biological differences” between primates and humans. Medical history has shown this to be untrue. As recently as this past January, a promising new therapy for patients with advanced heart failure had its first success in humans after being developed in animal models, including nonhuman primates. For additional information on the medical discoveries made possible due to research with nonhuman primates, FASEB has several resources available: 

• Animal Research Saves Lives | Facts on Studies with Nonhuman Primates 
• The Critical Role of Nonhuman Primates in Medical Research
• Biomedical Research Breakthroughs: 2010-2019 

Additional calls were made to cut funding to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and its Centers and Institutes based on particular political directives. Baker voiced support for the Cease Animal Research Grants Overseas (CARGO) Act, a bill introduced in the previous Congress to prohibit NIH from funding for any animal research outside of the United States. Goodman called for suspending and auditing all NIAID grants and contracts, after making the claim that NIAID is the largest funder of “transgender animal experiments,” though what constitutes a transgender animal experiment was not clearly defined. 

Speaking in support of opportunities for non-animal research, Locke expressed his support for the FDA Modernization Act 3.0, which would reorder the prioritization of non-clinical studies in the FDA drug application process, directly promoting research using non-animal models above that conducted in animals. This bill builds on FDA Modernization Act 2.0 (law as of 2022) and was recently re-introduced in the Senate by Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ). Baker highlighted the work of the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods (ICCVAM), a governmental coalition directed to evaluate non-animal alternative methods across scientific fields, and she called for an expansion of their role and purview. 

Both Baker and Goodman criticized government transparency, claiming that publicly accessible data from NIH RePORTER and USASpending.gov were insufficient to track animal research. Baker called for the introduction of the Federal Animal Research Accountability Act, legislation spearheaded by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine that has not yet been introduced to Congress and would require “recipients of NIH funding to complete a one-page form each year that includes the total number of animals bred, housed, and used in the previous year, sorted by species and pain and distress categories,” which is information already collected at the institutional-level and reported by the USDA in accordance with the Animal Welfare Act (AWA). Additionally, she criticized the exclusion of rodents and invertebrates from the AWA. 

Subcommittee members, including Chairwoman Mace and Ranking Member Shontel Brown [D-OH-11], agreed with the panelists that there is a moral imperative to reduce or eliminate animal research. Representative Mace expressed specific interest in working with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine on expanding the AWA to include mice and rats. Representative Lauren Boebert [R-CO-04] insisted on initiating an investigation into university animal research that uses fetal tissue (which she mis-referenced as “aborted baby parts”). 

A recording of the full hearing can be accessed at this link: Transgender Lab Rats and Poisoned Puppies: Oversight of Taxpayer Funded Animal Cruelty - United States House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.