Animal Testing and Federal Research Policy

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a weekend Fox News interview that he and other agency heads are committed to ending all federally funded animal experimentation, focusing first on non‑human primate research at CDC and NIH labs that currently use more than 100,000 monkeys and import over 20,000 annually. He confirmed that CDC scientists were ordered last month to phase out all monkey research, while advocates hailed the pledge as 'game‑changing' and researchers warned that primate studies remain required for most drug development and are central to work on HIV, COVID‑19 and other diseases, with few ready alternatives and no detailed federal transition plan yet disclosed.