The FDA awarded a roughly $368,600 purchase order for 20 young baboons to support pertussis infection and vaccine research in Maryland, drawing scrutiny as the agency simultaneously promotes alternatives intended to reduce reliance on animal experiments.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
The Food and Drug Administration has authorized the purchase of 20 young baboons for whooping cough research at its Maryland laboratory, creating a sharp contrast with a broader federal effort to reduce animal testing and expand human-based research alternatives.
Federal contracting records show the FDA awarded a purchase order worth approximately $368,600 on Aug. 31 for “Bordetella-free baboons for pertussis infection and vaccination studies.” Procurement records identify 20 animals between 6 and 8 months old for use by the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.
The expenditure was highlighted in a White Coat Waste Project investigation, which reported that an active FDA research protocol allows experiments involving as many as 48 baboons.
According to documents reviewed by the organization, animals can be divided into groups receiving experimental vaccines, antibodies or no protective intervention before being deliberately infected with Bordetella pertussis, the bacterium that causes whooping cough.
The bacteria are administered through the animals’ noses and directly into their tracheas, according to the protocol. FDA researchers have used similar baboon models for years because infected animals can develop many features resembling human pertussis, including intense coughing, and can transmit the bacteria to other baboons. FDA research has previously used the model to study differences between whole-cell and acellular pertussis vaccines and maternal vaccination.
White Coat Waste said the current protocol anticipates symptoms that can include prolonged coughing, vomiting, respiratory difficulty, fever, weight loss, nasal discharge, dehydration and reduced activity.
Researchers repeatedly collect blood and take nasal and throat samples while monitoring infection and immune responses. Some animals are scheduled to be euthanized so researchers can examine tissues including the lungs, trachea and lymph nodes, according to the records reviewed by the group.
The baboon model has played an important role in pertussis research because it can reproduce several characteristics of the disease seen in people. Scientific literature has shown, for example, that acellular pertussis vaccination may protect baboons from symptoms while still allowing bacterial colonization and transmission, findings that have contributed to research on improved vaccines.
The new purchase nevertheless arrives while the FDA publicly emphasizes reducing animal use.
In April 2025, the agency introduced a roadmap aimed at reducing, refining and in some cases replacing animal testing in drug development with tools such as computer modeling, organoids and human-cell systems. The FDA said this year that it had met its first-year goals under that initiative and subsequently issued additional guidance encouraging alternatives to animal experiments.
The agency has also specifically moved to reduce nonhuman-primate testing for certain monoclonal antibodies, arguing that newer human-relevant methods can sometimes provide equal or better information without extended primate studies.
Those initiatives do not amount to an immediate prohibition on all animal research.
The FDA says validated non-animal alternatives are still unavailable for many research questions and medical products. Its stated policy is to replace animal studies when scientifically reliable alternatives exist, reduce the number of animals required and refine remaining experiments to minimize their use and maximize the information obtained.
Animal-testing critics argue the new baboon purchase illustrates how substantial gaps remain between that long-term goal and current federal laboratory practices.
White Coat Waste noted that the FDA previously ended nicotine experiments involving young monkeys in 2018 and later sent the surviving animals to a sanctuary.
The organization subsequently campaigned against other FDA primate research and says those efforts helped reduce the agency’s overall primate testing by 63%.
The FDA also adopted an agency-wide policy allowing eligible laboratory animals to be retired to sanctuaries or rescue organizations rather than automatically euthanized after studies.
Federal spending records show that the agency later paid to retire several female baboons from its Maryland laboratory to a primate sanctuary.
The controversy extends beyond the FDA.
White Coat Waste says its review of federal spending identified more than $225 million in newly awarded, renewed, supplemented or extended NIH funding for experiments involving dogs and cats between February 2025 and September 2026. The organization reported that the total had risen from roughly $150 million in June and that close to $98 million went to pharmaceutical companies conducting dog research.
The group separately identified more than $30 million in fiscal 2026 NIH funding connected to 40 primate research projects, including studies involving experimental drugs, vaccines, organ transplantation and infectious pathogens. Those figures are based on White Coat Waste’s analysis of government grants and contracts.
At the same time, federal policy has moved in the opposite direction in several areas. The 2026 defense authorization law restricted funding for certain painful Defense Department experiments involving dogs and cats, while federal agencies have pursued reductions in other animal-testing programs.
That uneven transition is increasingly defining the national debate over laboratory animals.
Supporters of animal research argue that some living-animal models remain necessary when scientists cannot yet reproduce the complexity of whole-body immune responses, infection and disease transmission with cell cultures or computer models. The FDA itself says animal testing cannot currently be replaced across all research areas.
Critics counter that rapid advances in organ-on-a-chip systems, human-derived tissues, computational modeling and other new approach methodologies should be replacing animal studies much faster.
The newly purchased baboons sit directly at the center of that disagreement.
The FDA is simultaneously building a regulatory framework intended to move biomedical research away from routine animal testing while purchasing young primates for an infectious-disease model it has used to investigate how pertussis spreads and how vaccines perform.
For the 20 baboons covered by the Aug. 31 purchase order, that transition has not yet arrived.
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