U.S. EPA to eliminate all mammal testing by 2035
By David Grimm Sep. 10, 2019 , 6:00 PM
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Washington, D.C., announced today that it will stop conducting or funding studies on mammals by 2035. The move, which is already eliciting strong reactions from groups supporting or opposing experiments on animals, makes EPA the first federal agency to put a hard deadline on phasing out animal research.
EPA’s decision “is a decisive win for taxpayers, animals, and the environment,” says Justin Goodman, vice president of advocacy and public policy at the White Coat Waste Project, a Washington, D.C.–based animal activist group that has slammed such research as a waste of taxpayer money. “Animal tests are unreliable and misleading,” he asserts.
But Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a Washington, D.C.–based environmental group, blasts EPA’s decision. “It’s very disappointing and very frustrating,” Sass says. Ending animal testing, she argues, “is going to allow potentially dangerous chemicals to get out there into the environment and into consumer products.”
EPA relies on animal testing to gauge the safety of chemicals, whether it be a new pesticide or a potential pollutant in the environment. But chemical companies have long complained that the tests—many of which they pay for—are expensive and time-consuming. And animal advocacy organizations have urged the agency to move toward nonanimal models, such as computer programs and “organ-on-a chip” technology, a collection of cells designed to mimic entire organs. Legislation, including a 2016 amendment to the Toxic Substances Control Act, has required EPA to move away from animal experiments.
More:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/09/us-epa-eliminate-all-mammal-testing-2035
= new reply since forum marked as read
I'm very happy about this.
(Of course, I'm the type of person who felt sorry for a mouse caught in a trap my hubs put out a few yrs ago. It would've been more justified had a real mouser, i.e. a cat had caught it. 
)