New approach methodologies including AI models and organ-on-chip technology are changing what is possible in research.
What’s happening: Animal-Free Science Advocacy is calling on the public to support Australian Parliament e-petition EN8985, which seeks to extend the same ethical protections currently granted to great apes to all non-human primates used in research.
Why this matters: Australia’s research ethics framework currently draws a line between great apes and other primates such as macaques, baboons and marmosets.
Under Australia’s current research framework, great apes occupy a special category. They cannot be used in research except under highly restricted circumstances. Other non-human primates, including macaques, baboons and marmosets, do not share that status. They can be, and are, subjected to surgical procedures, behavioural manipulation, restraint, and long-term laboratory confinement.
Animal-Free Science Advocacy (AFSA) is now asking Parliament to close that gap. The organisation is calling on the public to support e-petition EN8985, titled “Allow Primates in Research the Same Protections as Great Apes,” which closes on 4 March 2026. The petition is listed on the Australian Parliament e-petitions website.
AFSA has provided formal briefings to every federal Member of Parliament and Senator, and has submitted the same briefing to the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) as part of its current review of the Australian Code for the Care and Use of Animals for Scientific Purposes.
The ethical argument behind the petition centres on consistency. Professor Andrew Knight, an animal welfare expert cited in AFSA’s briefing, states that limiting protections to great apes is “ethically inconsistent,” noting that the morally relevant characteristics used to justify great ape protections are “not unique to great apes.” Geneticist Dr Jarrod Bailey supports amending the NHMRC primate guidelines, stating that monkeys are “cognitively and emotionally advanced, and highly sentient,” and describing extended protections as “a positive step according to animal ethics, good science, and human ethics.”
AFSA argues that many non-human primates possess complex cognitive, emotional and social capacities, making their exclusion from heightened protections scientifically and ethically indefensible.
Robyn Kirby, Primate Campaign Consultant with AFSA, framed the issue in terms of scientific direction as much as ethics.
“Primate research is an outdated, unpopular and increasingly unscientific practice,” Ms Kirby said. “The continued use of highly sentient primates in invasive research cannot be justified when modern, human-relevant and non-animal methods are rapidly advancing.”
What NAMs actually are
The non-animal methods Ms Kirby refers to have a formal name in international regulatory science: New Approach Methodologies, or NAMs. They encompass a broad and growing range of human-relevant tools, including organ-on-chip systems, organoids, in silico computational models, and AI-powered prediction tools, all designed to replicate human biology more directly than animal models.
AFSA’s position is that these methods are not simply an ethical preference. They are, in its view, increasingly the more scientifically sound option, producing data that is more directly applicable to human outcomes. The organisation argues that as these tools advance, the justification for continuing invasive primate research weakens on scientific grounds as well as ethical ones.
How the world is moving
Australia is not the only country where this debate is active. The US and UK have both moved to formally acknowledge the shift toward non-animal methods within their regulatory and research frameworks.
In the United States, the FDA Modernization Act 2.0, signed into law in December 2022, removed the longstanding statutory requirement that animal testing be conducted before human clinical trials, explicitly allowing non-animal methods including cell-based assays and computational models as alternatives. The FDA Modernization Act 3.0, passed by the US Senate in December 2025, built further on that foundation by directing the FDA to establish formal processes for qualifying non-animal testing methods and to expedite review of applications that incorporate NAMs.
In the United Kingdom, the Government published a strategy in November 2025 titled Replacing Animals in Science, committing to work toward phasing out animal testing and citing advances in AI, genomics, organoids and 3D cell systems as making that transition increasingly viable.
Both shifts reflect a direction of travel that AFSA argues Australia’s current Code does not yet reflect.
What Australia is being asked to do
AFSA’s recommendations to the NHMRC are specific. The organisation is asking that the Code be amended to extend special ethical protections to all non-human primates, that approval of new non-human primate research projects be prohibited while allowing approved projects to conclude and animals to be retired appropriately, and that NHMRC funding for new non-human primate research cease from 2028 onwards, with priority given to non-animal methods.
The petition closes on 4 March 2026. Whether it generates the parliamentary debate its supporters are seeking will depend on how many Australians sign before that date.
What is clear is that the scientific and regulatory context has shifted considerably in the past three years. The tools that advocates point to as alternatives are no longer theoretical. They are being validated, funded and formally recognised by regulators in two of Australia’s closest scientific and policy partners.
Australia’s NHMRC review of the Code for the Care and Use of Animals for Scientific Purposes is ongoing. Its outcome will signal where Australia positions itself within that broader international shift.
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