End to CDC non-human primate research expected by the end of 2025
ATLANTA, Georgia––About 200 fewer macaques will be used in 2026 in U.S. federal laboratories after the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) quits keeping non-human primates toward the end of 2025.
That will leave about 7,000 more non-human primates, mostly rhesus and pig-tailed macaques, still in custody of other government agencies, chiefly the National Institutes of Health, Food & Drug Administration, and Defense Health Services.
Recently appointed CDC deputy chief of staff Sam Beyda, a former member of the now disbanded Department of Governmental Efficiency team, circa November 1, 2025 ordered CDC scientists “to phase out all of their monkey research,” reported Science online news editor David Grimm on November 21, 2025, confirming several days of rumors.
“The fate of the animals is unclear”
“The fate of the animals—largely used in work on HIV prevention—is unclear,” Grimm wrote. “Some may be transferred to primate sanctuaries; others may be euthanized.”
Mentioned Grimm, “Apart from the retirement of research chimpanzees initiated by the National Institutes of Health a decade ago,” this will be “the first time a U.S. agency has ended its in-house nonhuman primate program.”
According to “a government official who is familiar with the situation but who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal,” Grimm wrote, “Beyda said he was speaking for Health & Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who recently has made curtailing animal research part of his Make America Healthy Again agenda. Beyda has also been newly tapped to lead several initiatives that will restructure CDC,” Bloomberg News has reported.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Are macaque suppliers losing bet on expanding use?
The termination of CDC macaque studies is in line with the stated intention of U.S. Food & Drug Administration commissioner Martin Makary and National Institutes of Health director Jay Bhattacharya to reduce reliance on animal studies, and with the Department of Defense ending experiments on dogs and cats earlier in 2025.
(See Enlisting Trump “blogosphere,” White Coat Waste kills cruel cat experiments.)
But the end of CDC macaque studies is directly contrary to soaring laboratory demand for monkeys, especially macaques, over the past 20 years, including during the first Donald Trump presidency.
As recently as a year ago, the major breeders and importers of monkeys for biomedical research appeared to be betting heavily that high demand for monkeys, even at prices of $60,000 apiece, would continue for long enough to warrant expanding facilities, both in the U.S. and abroad.
[See Trump regime & labs at odds: where does monkey demand go from here?, Lab chimp retirement upstages steep rise in monkey use and Will “monkey shortage” due to COVID-19 bring new research methods?]
The politics of science
The second Donald Trump presidency has seen an abrupt reversal of the longterm trend toward increasing laboratory animal use, dating back to the formation of the Food & Drug Administration in 1930, the CDC in 1946, and the National Institutes of Health in modern form in 1948.
(See Is NIH under Trump really replacing animal testing, or just axing research?)
Beyda, apparently a political appointee rather than a scientist, “graduated with a degree in economics from Columbia University in 2023, and in 2020 he co-authored an editorial expressing interest in volunteering to be a human subject for a COVID-19 vaccine challenge trial,” Grimm noted.
Said Anthony Bellotti, the former Republican campaign strategist who founded and directs the right-leaning White Coat Waste Project, to Stephen Dinan of the Washington Times, “Secretary Kennedy has now delivered on his promise to work with White Coat Waste by completely shutting down the CDC’s primate labs, where hundreds of victims were infected with smallpox, hemorrhagic fevers, hepatitis, and HIV-like viruses at taxpayer expense.”
“We think this will set a standard”
“This is exceeding our expectations,” agreed White Coat Waste senior vice president of advocacy and public policy Justin Goodman, to Grimm.
“We think this will set a standard for other agencies,” Goodman added.
Along with the White Coat Waste Project, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Center for a Humane Economy claimed credit for the CDC end of monkey studies.
Wrote Center for a Humane Economy president Wayne Pacelle and director of research and regulatory affairs Tamara Drake, in a joint statement, “This change in policy holds the potential for a seismic shift in how our nation approaches drug testing, infectious disease work, and biomedical research.
“It is perhaps a bigger development than the 2015 announcement by the National Institutes of Health to end in short order the use of chimpanzees in invasive experiments.
“Decades of HIV research using primates failed to produce a useful vaccine. These protracted failures became emblematic of the inherent deficiencies in animal testing,” Pacelle and Drake said.
But what will become of the CDC macaques?
But what will become of the CDC macaques?
“In late October,” recounted Grimm, “Beyda reached out to Scott Kubisch, who runs the Peaceable Primate Sanctuary, one of the largest monkey refuges in North America. The Winamac, Indiana, facility has made a name for itself by working with academic labs to retire their former research animals.”
Said Kubish to Grimm, “He wanted to know how many monkeys we could take immediately, and whether it would be possible to retire all of them within a year.”
“Kubisch says it would take close to $14 million—and at least a year—for Peaceable Primate to prepare for an additional 200 monkeys,” Grimm summarized.
“I’m very interested in working with them,” Kubish affirmed. “It just hinges on funding.”
Where will the money come from?
How deep are the public pockets for primate retirement?
Carole Noon (1949-2009) raised $3.7 million from the Arcus Foundation to found Save the Chimps in 1997, the donor-funded refuge for about 300 former research chimpanzees located near Fort Pierce, Florida.
Chimp Haven, near Shreveport, Louisiana, also housing about 300 former research chimpanzees, is 75% funded by federal grants, including the cost of a recently completed $20 million expansion.
Both Save the Chimps and Chimp Haven, however, must raise substantial sums toward operating costs from the public, in competition with numerous other primate sanctuaries, including Primarily Primates and the Born Free USA Primate Sanctuary near San Antonio, Texas, and Project Chimps in Blue Ridge, Georgia.
How deep are the public pockets for laboratory primate retirement?
CDC monkey program was already at risk
The CDC “monkey program was in jeopardy,” Grimm observed, “even before it was ordered to be shut down. A U.S. House of Representatives budget bill that sets 2026 spending levels for CDC would zero out funding for the HIV division at the agency.
“If the Senate agrees in a final funding bill,” Grimm reported, “studies on most of CDC’s monkeys would end [anyway], says a high-level agency source who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal, adding “There seems to be an explicit desire to stop nonhuman primate research in toto.”
Escapes spotlighted risks of monkey research
In the immediate background to the Beyda order for the CDC to stop the monkey business was the October 28, 2025 escape of 21 rhesus macaques from an overturned truck on I-59 near Heidelberg, Mississippi.
The macaques, on their way from the Tulane University National Biomedical Research Center to another undisclosed research facility, were incorrectly rumored to be infected with COVID, herpes, and hepatitis C.
Thirteen of the macaques were recaptured relatively quickly, five were shot by police, one was found dead, and one was shot by Jessica Bond Ferguson of Heidelberg days later in her yard. Ferguson told media she feared for her children’s safety.
The last macaque was recaptured on November 6, 2025, after eight days at large.
The Heidelberg escape followed the November 6, 2024 escape of 43 young female rhesus macaques from an Alpha Genesis research colony in Yemassee, South Carolina, some of whom remained outside the Alpha Genesis buildings, but on Alpha Genesis property, until January 25, 2025.
(See Behind the Alpha Genesis monkey “great escape” & recaptures.)
Dutch legislature votes to end non-human primate studies
Also in the immediate background of the Beyda order to end CDC monkey research was a Dutch Senate vote around the same time “to phase out monkey studies at Europe’s largest primate research center,” reported by Martin Enserink for Science on November 6, 2025.
The vote, wrote Enserink, “which reduces funding for animal studies at the Biomedical Primate Research Centre in Rijswijk to zero by 2030, follows a similar vote in the [Dutch] House of Representatives on July 3, 2025.
“The votes marked a major win for the animal rights movement and the small Party for Animals, which won its first House seats in 2006,” Enserink assessed.
“But the Dutch government, ” meaning in the parliamentary system the political party or coalition in power, “which strongly opposed the move, has agreed to explore alternative sources of funding, and Biomedical Primate Research Centre director Merel Langelaar says she ‘remains optimistic’ the research can continue.”
The Biomedical Primate Research Centre, Enserink explained, “funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture & Science, has a breeding colony of almost 1,000 monkeys of three different species,” used in “research on the brain and infectious diseases.”
(Daniel Leventhal photo)
The Dutch House of Representatives vote, Enserink noted, “passed with the narrowest possible margin, 76-74, supported by an unusual coalition of seven left- and right-wing parties.”
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