Trump put EPA on course to end animal testing; Biden has started it up again

Jasper was “a very good rabbit,” according to the EPA researchers who kept him. But that didn’t earn him a full retirement.

The Environmental Protection Agency decided to euthanize Jasper earlier this year after he developed health issues from being forced to stay in a wire cage. His caretakers ruled that “humane euthanasia” was a better option than transferring him to an alternative, saying it was too much of a burden for a lab to provide the daily socializing the bunny would need.

Jasper’s death is part of a broader retreat on animal testing by the Biden administration according to the White Coat Waste Project, a watchdog group that shared documents exclusively with The Washington Times detailing EPA’s reversal.

The files show that the EPA scrapped a Trump administration plan that would have cut animal testing by 30% in 2025 and ended it altogether by 2035. Instead, the agency says it won’t be bound by any time limits and is following “the best available science.”

WCW, which focuses on taxpayer-funded animal testing, called the EPA’s reversal a betrayal and said Michael Regan, the agency’s administrator, broke his promise to Congress to “remain strongly committed” to phasing out animal testing.

“Now, our investigation has exposed that President Biden’s EPA has scrapped this plan and, at the behest of bureaucrats in white lab coats and environmental and social justice groups, is butchering bunnies and sentencing millions of other animals to painful deaths in what’s likely the largest resurgence of taxpayer-funded animal testing in the history of the U.S. government,” said Anthony Bellotti, president and founder of WCW.

EPA uses animal testing to help determine toxicity levels of exposure to pesticides and chemicals. The agency runs a lab in North Carolina where it does its testing.

It is exploring alternatives that can evaluate toxicity without needing to test on animals. That is what Andrew Wheeler, EPA’s administrator in the Trump administration, was pursuing when he issued his phaseout directive in September 2019. He called for the 30% reduction in mammal testing by 2025 and a complete end by 2035.

Mr. Bellotti at WCW said cutting animal testing is an issue that unites Republican and Democratic taxpayers, pet owners and both parties on Capitol Hill.

What it doesn’t have, the EPA says, is the support of the agency’s scientists.

In a statement the agency acknowledged it scrapped the deadlines, saying they had become a needless point of contention.

“While the goals/dates in the original work plan may have been intended to spur focus and action, the dates themselves became the primary focus of discussion within the scientific and stakeholder communities as opposed to what actions or path the Agency should take to reduce the use of animals while still remaining fully protective of human health and the environment,” the EPA said. “As a result, the goals/dates were removed to shift the focus towards these actions as represented by the objectives, strategies, and deliverables outlined in the document.”

Mr. Wheeler said dropping the deadlines means giving up on the phaseout.

“It’s not going to change, and we’re not going to move away from animal testing unless we have a hard and fast date. And until that is set in stone and it’s implemented, we’re not going to move away from animal testing, because it’s just too easy to continue to do business as usual,” he said in a video statement for WCW.

Mr. Wheeler said he knows all about the agency scientists who have a predilection for animal testing. Indeed, when he first asked his staff to draft an order banning testing, what came back was a watered-down proposal not to ban, but merely to study alternatives to testing.

He ended up having to draft the ban himself. He proposed a complete end by 2030 but got more pushback, so he added five more years to the deadline.

“It’s a little frustrating now — it’s been what, three years since I signed the order and the current administration has taken away the dates,” he said.

The agency’s reversal came amid severe pushback from key Biden political allies in the environmental and social justice world.

In a March letter, the 38 organizations said there just aren’t good enough alternatives to animal testing when it comes to ruling on the safety of chemicals and pesticides, which is one of the EPA’s chief jobs.

The groups said the drive to curtail animal testing is coming from industry and animal welfare groups, at the expense of what were labeled “environmental justice communities,” often low-income minority communities.

“Prematurely curtailing rodent testing will deprive EPA of the tools it needs to protect the health of individuals and communities – particularly those overburdened by harmful environmental pollutants – and will deepen health disparities,” said the groups, which included the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense Fund.

The battle over animal testing at federal facilities has been quietly raging, with a bipartisan coalition on Capitol Hill working to reel in the practice.

Members of Congress this summer blasted the Veterans Affairs Department for performing “cruel” experiments on animals, seemingly in defiance of laws meant to wind down the practice. 

At the EPA, Mr. Wheeler signed a directive on his way out the door in 2021 ordering that the rabbits kept at the agency’s lab in North Carolina be given a “retirement in place” once researchers finished with their experiments.

The agency said there were “complexities” with retirement, though it said other federal agencies had worked with nonprofits to care for their animals after their lab work was done. 

The White Coat Waste Project followed up with an offer of adoption and placement of rabbits still in EPA’s care, including covering the costs. EPA rebuffed the overture in February 2021, which WCW said was the first worrying sign of a retreat on animal testing.

At the time, the EPA said the bunnies needed to stay with the agency’s researchers who were “the only caregivers they have known.”

Since the retirement notice, the EPA has renewed a research project on three rabbits. The experiment involves collecting the rabbits’ sperm in an experiment loosely tied to exploring the effects of “the worldwide drop in human semen quality.”

“Rabbit sperm allows us to develop the procedure for immunolocalization of the protein on frozen/thawed sperm before we begin to work with human samples,” the EPA said in its project proposal document, which was obtained by WCW.

Researchers use a “teaser” to spur the rabbits to “mount and ejaculate.” The researchers said they have “3 complete sets of artificial vaginas” ready to help collect the sperm.

Rabbits have to be used because their sperm “is quite similar to that of human sperm,” the EPA said, adding that it is impossible to collect sperm from rats or mice “noninvasively.”

The three New Zealand White rabbits used in the experiment are named Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday and Johnny Ringo.

The EPA, in response to The Times’ inquiry, said the three have been at the agency’s lab for several years, and the agency hasn’t obtained any new ones. The three are covered by the “retire in place” policy.

“When they are no longer available for scientific use, they are retired from duty but continue to live in the vivarium at the EPA Lab. They receive daily animal husbandry and veterinary care, socialize in the vivarium’s playroom, eat hay and fresh vegetables, are exposed to an assortment of mental and physical stimulation objects (“toys”), and receive extensive human interaction during grooming, exams, and trips to the playroom. They will remain with their colony and the only caregivers they have known,” EPA said.

Yet the document detailing the sperm collection research says that “after project completion” the rabbits will be “euthanized by the veterinarian.”

That was the fate that befell Jasper and another rabbit, Leo, euthanized in December 2021.

Leo’s veterinarian said in his case file that he had been losing weight throughout the year and had urine scald, a condition the vet said couldn’t be treated in the lab setting.

“He got extra treats, critical care and veg today. And attention,” the vet said in an email announcing the plans for euthanizing him.

Jasper was euthanized earlier this year at nine-and-a-half years old. The vet said the rabbit was having trouble standing on the wire cage floor. The vet wondered if Jasper could be moved to a pen with a rubber mat and fence, which she said would help him get to his water and food better.

The principal investigator on the project declined to make that change, he was euthanized.

“He was a very good rabbit,” the vet said in an email announcing Jasper’s death.