Jade Adams has been obsessed with animals most of her life, and it shows.
The 11-year-old loves feeding raspberries to her bunny, Drax, and roughhousing with her dog, Marley. She excitedly shows off Marley’s collection of themed collars stored in a basket near the front door of her home in Keene — one with hearts for Valentine’s Day, another from her favorite book series, Harry Potter — and regales visitors with tales of Drax’s creative attempts to escape his pen.
When it was time for her fifth-grade class at the Wells Memorial School in Harrisville to explore running for New Hampshire’s kid governor in 2024, Jade knew immediately what her platform would be: Advocate for New Hampshire to outlaw animal testing.
She can recite startling statistics from her research: More than 100 million animals are used for testing in U.S. labs every year — a practice that dates as far back as 500 B.C. in ancient Greece. In the process, many are burned, crippled, poisoned or endure other abuse.
“It made me feel really sad that this is happening to animals and that it’s been happening for so long, and I just really felt passionate about stopping it after reading those,” Jade said.
Her campaign, complete with a three-pronged education and advocacy plan, was a winning one. Jade has spent the past year as kid governor, making speeches, visiting schools and organizing a letter campaign to Gov. Kelly Ayotte in hopes that New Hampshire will become the 13th state to ban animal testing.
Lawmakers are taking steps to do just that. A small bipartisan group filed legislation this month to prohibit testing facilities in the state from using animals when alternative methods are available. It targets cosmetics, which the industry has long tested for allergies and efficacy on animals, while making an exception for biomedical research.
In its current form, it also mandates that if a company has no other approved testing methods, they must use as few animals and reduce pain as much as possible while documenting their actions for governmental oversight.
While Jade would eventually like to see her state enact a complete ban on the practice, she said the bill on the table is “definitely a step in the right direction.”
“I think that this bill is amazing, and I think that’s going to really help New Hampshire with animal testing,” Jade said. “I think that it’s really good that it’s not just a bill that they just came up with, like it’s already happened to 12 other states in the U.S.”
New Hampshire toyed with the idea last year, and Jade braved her public speaking nerves to testify in front of a legislative committee, but the bills didn’t end up passing.
When she’s not feeding treats to her pets, Jade has taken several trips across New Hampshire to spread her message over the past year. To fulfill her campaign promise, she presented to three different schools about the reality of animal testing and how to identify cruelty-free products with the bunny symbol. She’s also collected letters from those classes to send to Ayotte and hosted “The Paw-Cast” on the kid governor’s YouTube channel.
Jade’s term ends this week as Liv Crete-Sayer, a student at Boscawen Elementary School, will be inaugurated as the 2026 kid governor on Tuesday. She ran on a platform to educate New Hampshire kids on the dangers of smoking, vaping and drugs.
Jade’s interest in animals, however, isn’t fading. She tries to buy cruelty-free products and is adamant that everyone can take action to stop animal testing. As her school superintendent remarked on “The Paw-Cast,” Jade said, “small changes make a big difference.”
“If they think they can’t really help stop animal testing, every single time that you purchase something that’s not animal-tested, it’s really helping out a lot,” Jade said. “Just because … you can’t make a bill doesn’t mean that you can’t help stop animal testing.”
What’s next: Pending recommendation from the Senate Commerce Committee, the full Senate must vote on the bill by late March.