Good news came via an email from NAVS landed in my inbox:
Yesterday, September 29, the U.S. Senate unanimously gave its consent to an updated version of the FDA Modernization Act. An earlier version of this legislation has already passed the House of Representatives.
The House and Senate versions of the bill still need to be reconciled; however, once signed into law, the FDA Modernization Act will end an archaic mandate by the Food and Drug Administration that all new drugs be tested on animals. It would instead give drug developers the option to use modern, non-animal methods.
While this bill does not mean a wholesale cessation of animal tests in drug development, it finally provides drug manufacturers with the option to use safe, humane, non-animal tests. It brings us one huge step closer to the day when animal tests are relegated to the dustbin of history.
NAVS advocates like you have been working hard for more than a year to ensure the passage of this bill. This is a time to be proud—your voice truly has made all the difference!
Thank you for all you do on behalf of animals.
From CATO:
Today the U.S. Senate passed, by unanimous consent, the FDA Modernization Act 2.0, co‐sponsored by Senators Rand Paul (R‑KY) and Cory Booker (D‑NJ). The bill removes the mandate, included in the 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA), that requires all drugs to be tested on animals to exclude toxicity. The bill does not end animal testing, but it now permits drug developers to use alternative methods to test for toxicity when feasible. Similar provisions are in a bill passed earlier in the U.S. House of Representatives, making this reform likely to become law.
Since the FDCA was passed 83 years ago, research has shown animal testing to be an inconsistent indicator of drug toxicity and, in many cases, alternative methods are equally or more reliable. Yet, because of the 1938 mandate, hundreds of animals must be killed for a pharmaceutical company to bring a single drug to market. Last year, Senator Paul held a “Puppy Press Conference,” making the case for the reform.
This bipartisan legislation is certainly commendable. But, to be fair, it’s low‐hanging fruit. The FDCA needs much more comprehensive reform and must be made consistent with its authors’ pledge to respect the people’s right to self‐medicate.
Thank you Senator Cory Booker for making this happen. You are the only person in the senate since well for ever who works tirelessly to help animals in need.
Thank you Senator Rand Paul for crossing party lines and standing up for the moral cause.
For decades animal testing was done for one reason - because they can do it and no one cared.
This is not a right or left wing issue. This is a moral obligation. Thank you for doing what you do.
A little history tour to explain why this is not a political issue but a madness of humanity issue.
During cold car, Soviet Union killed 180,000 whales for no reason since:
the Soviet Union had little real demand for whale products. Once the blubber was cut away for conversion into oil, the rest of the animal, as often as not, was left in the sea to rot or was thrown into a furnace and reduced to bone meal—a low-value material used for agricultural fertilizer, made from the few animal byproducts that slaughterhouses and fish canneries can’t put to more profitable use….Why did a country with so little use for whales kill so many of them?
The reason they killed so many whales was because... well "they can" and no one questioned.
The Soviet whalers, Berzin wrote, had been sent forth to kill whales for little reason other than to say they had killed them. They were motivated by an obligation to satisfy obscure line items in the five-year plans that drove the Soviet economy, which had been set with little regard for the Soviet Union’s actual demand for whale products. “Whalers knew that no matter what, the plan must be met!” Berzin wrote. The Sovetskaya Rossiya seemed to contain in microcosm everything Berzin believed to be wrong about the Soviet system: its irrationality, its brutality, its inclination toward crime.
Along the similar craziness of Soviet Union, USA is still doing animal testing using dogs, cats, monkeys, bunnies and other mammals for the same reason - because "they can" and no one questions them.
Since the FDCA was passed 83 years ago, research has shown animal testing to be an inconsistent indicator of drug toxicity and, in many cases, alternative methods are equally or more reliable. Yet, because of the 1938 mandate, hundreds of animals must be killed for a pharmaceutical company to bring a single drug to market. Last year, Senator Paul held a “Puppy Press Conference,” making the case for the reform.
Moral degradation happens agnostic to politics and geography unleashing immense pain and suffering on animals.
We have an obligation to change this.
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