It was a year when the ground finally started to shift under our feet. So much felt uncertain in 2025—politics, weather, the pace of the world itself—but one thing became beautifully, unmistakably clear: Compassion is reshaping the way scientists conduct experiments and how we eat, dress and live in other ways. For animals, it was a year of old harms losing their grip.

Some of the most meaningful changes occurred in places the public rarely sees. After years of pressure from PETA and the public, laboratories began moving away from cruel, unreliable experiments on animals, showing that real change is within reach.

The National Institutes of Health committed to a sweeping shift toward humane, human-relevant methods. It invested $87 million in a new organoid modeling center and ended funding calls for studies that rely solely on animals. It also stopped conducting sepsis tests on beagles and slashed funding for HIV vaccine experiments on monkeys, pushing experimenters toward methods that better reflect human biology.

The progress didn’t stop there. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that it would move to replace tests on animals in the development of monoclonal antibody therapies and other drugs with more effective, human-relevant methods; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced it will end all experiments on monkeys; and the National Defense Authorization Act was signed into law, which will include a ban on the use of live animals in live-fire trauma training drills across all military branches in 2026.

Kindness showed up in everyday places, too. American Airlines tested vegan JUST Egg on its brunch menu on select cross-country flights, providing compassionate choices even at 30,000 feet. Coffee chains across the country—including Dunkin’, Peet’s, PJ’s Coffee, Dutch Bros and Tim Hortons locations—stopped charging extra for vegan milks, making it easier for customers to choose drinks that don’t support the dairy industry, which tears calves away from their mothers.

Fashion moved forward as well. SHEIN banned fur and wild-animal skins, Nordstrom’s “BP.” line went fully vegan and after a PETA Asia investigation exposed the cruelty of angora, Gwyneth Paltrow’s goop removed angora from its website. Even the auto industry joined in. French carmaker Renault will eliminate leather from its interiors, helping move the industry toward a kinder future.

Justice caught up with two notorious animal exploiters. Longtime PETA target and Tiger King villain Bhagavan “Doc” Antle was sentenced to time in federal prison and ordered to surrender three chimpanzees for placement at an accredited sanctuary. Chimp Crazy antagonist Tonia Haddix pleaded guilty to perjury and obstruction of justice after lying about Tonka the chimpanzee’s whereabouts. And Limbani, an 8-year-old chimpanzee who’d been kept alone at a roadside zoo since he was just 4 days old, was transferred to a spacious sanctuary where he can interact with his own kind. These animals spent years suffering, and now they finally know how freedom feels.

Carnival Corporation, the world’s largest cruise line, confirmed that it no longer offers excursions to facilities with elephant rides, and Airbnb and Marriott cut ties with camel and horse rides at the Giza pyramids. Michoacán became the sixth Mexican state to ban bullfighting, signaling that traditions rooted in torment are losing ground.

Community-level compassion grew stronger, too. Ojai, California, adopted the nation’s first ordinance banning “torture breeding,” the deliberate breeding of animals such as bulldogs and pugs for extreme features and often debilitating deformities. Dollarama banned glue traps in more than 1,600 stores, and Culver City, California, became the third U.S. city to entirely ban these devices that can cause small animals and birds to rip their skin from their bodies or chew their own limbs off trying to free themselves. And PETA’s spay/neuter programs sterilized more than 14,000 animals at low- or no-cost, helping families care for the animals they love and preventing countless animals from being born only to end up homeless.

From laboratories to living rooms, every breakthrough reminds us that change is possible. Here’s to keeping that momentum alive in 2026!

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Melissa Rae Sanger is a licensed veterinary technician and a senior writer for the PETA Foundation, 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510; www.PETA.org.

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