Advocacy

Our Purpose: To advocate for the people and programs dedicated to laboratory animals used in biomedical research.

Legislative Advocacy

By actively engaging policy-makers and carefully monitoring legislation, rules and policies, we help protect your ability to conduct biomedical research through all appropriate models. Most notably, we advanced a first in the nation research supported adoption bill out of committee and are working to secure its passage in 2019. We also stopped several bills with negative consequences for research from advancing and secured amendments to others to ensure life-saving research continues. Just a few of our successes are listed below.

• In the legislative session that began in January 2018, NJABR is tracking 172 bills through the month of December and took direct action on several that would have an adverse impact on biomedical research in New Jersey. Among other successes, this advocacy resulted in an amendment to a grooming licensure bill to ensure that research animals could continue to be groomed by facility staff without the need to hire a licensed groomer. We also secured amendments to fundraising license plate legislation that excluded anti-research animal activists from the program created by a new law. Research exemptions were also included in several bills that advanced in 2018;
• NJABR submitted testimony on several bills and regularly met with legislators throughout the year to ensure that
  the important work being conducted by member institutions was understood by New Jersey’s lawmakers;
• We engaged legislators and staff from both parties and developed educational information about research animal adoption programs. This effort allowed the Homes for Animal Heroes Act to advance out of Committee with unanimous support. This legislation is now a research supported bill that would allow our members to appropriately control of animal re-homing efforts, while removing anti-research extremists from the process. We are working with our colleagues to bring this legislation to other states and rightly take the adoption discussion back from those who seek to end life-saving research.

Legal Monitoring and Public Policy

With increasing frequency, threats to research are moving from security concerns, such as infiltrations, break-ins, and protests, to the public policy arena where activists openly advocate to shutdown humane research with animals through lawsuits and regulatory change. NJABR believes this to be just as significant a threat to research as legislative initiatives promoted by anti-research groups. We actively monitor these threats, share details with members, and take action whenever appropriate. In 2018, NJABR’s activity in this area includes the following:

• We monitored regulatory processes at the federal and state levels and submitted comments to both the United States Department of Agriculture, the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare, and the Department of Transportation;
• NJABR follows litigation filings and decisions, including actions brought by groups like the Non-human Rights Project, PETA, HSUS, and the Rescue + Freedom Project, to find both negative and positive developments for the research community;
• We scour the internet and news sites for stories about threats to research to discover activism trends and share relevant details with members through our weekly distribution of News Clippings;
• NJABR regularly discusses related developments through presentations to members, speaking engagements, and webinars to help ensure that the community remains ahead of changes stemming from court decisions and regulatory change.