When the Testing Stops, Where Do the Rabbits Go?

The question nobody funds

Every roadmap describes the methods that will replace animals. None describes what happens to the animals currently in the system as it winds down.

A facility that stops running a rabbit assay has a colony and no protocol for it. The default is euthanasia, because that is what the standard operating procedure says and because nothing obliges otherwise.

The law already exists. It just leaves rabbits out.

California Education Code section 66017.7 requires public and independent colleges and universities to offer dogs and cats to rescue organizations for adoption rather than euthanizing them at the end of a study.

Rabbits are not included.

The statute reaches universities, not commercial laboratories. That is where the amendment starts, and it is why the sanctuary has to exist before the law changes.

California has already decided rabbits are companion animals in another statute. AB 485 and then AB 2152 took dogs, cats and rabbits out of pet store sales entirely. Three species, named together.

Extending section 66017.7 to rabbits is a category change to an existing law, not a new law. It is the most winnable animal bill available in this state.

What we are building

A cage-free sanctuary in Southern California, designed from the start for animals who have spent their lives in confinement. Open ground, colony housing, soil deep enough to dig, and no bars.

A laboratory rabbit has never dug. Most have never seen ground. The transition takes months, and a cage is the worst possible place to attempt it.

What we ask of the people building the replacements

If your work retires a rabbit assay, tell us before the colony is dispersed. If you fund that work, fund the landing as well.

The technology is not the constraint. It has not been the constraint for twenty years.