In the news
6 Sep 2008
24 July 2006
Shocking scale of UK animal experiments
Home Office figures released on 24 July 20061 reveal the shocking scale of laboratory animal use in the UK. Figures have reached the highest for some 14 years with the total number of experiments (procedures) started in 2005 increasing to nearly 2.9 million2. The number of individual animals also increased to 2.8 million3. The UK remains the biggest user of animal experiments in Europe4.
All regulated procedures are defined by the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 as likely to cause pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm. In all, 60% of procedures (involving over 1.7 million animals) were conducted without any form of anaesthesia whatsoever.
There was an increase in procedures on mice, guinea pigs, rabbits, equids, birds, amphibians, fish and non-human primates. Procedures on primates increased by an alarming 11% and the actual number of individual primates increased by 12% (over 3,000 individual primates were used in 2005). The main use of primates was for toxicity testing of pharmaceuticals. Toxicity testing in general accounted for 14% of all procedures.
Genetic modification of animals now represents one third (33%) of all procedures (957,451). The use of genetically manipulated animals has increased every year since 1990 when they represented a mere 1.5% of the total.
There were 26 infringements of the current legislation recorded in 2005. Action taken by the Home Office included “admonishing” licence holders, requirements to attend retraining courses or review systems of controls, and “letters of censure”. There were no prosecutions.
The Dr Hadwen Trust remains concerned that the Home Office statistics, although alarming, still fail to reveal the true scale of laboratory animal suffering. There are potentially hundreds of thousands of ‘missing’ animals who do not appear in the statistics, such as those who are bred for vivisection but killed as ‘surplus’; animals killed just for biological products like blood or other tissues; and animals subjected to experiments spanning more than one year (as any subsequent years of suffering will simply not be registered in statistics). If this hidden suffering were to be included in the statistics, the British public would be horrified to see the true number of animals used by the UK animal research industry.
Wendy Higgins, the Trust’s Communications Director, says:
The Dr Hadwen Trust for Humane Research is appalled by these latest statistics, representing as they do the government’s utter failure to engage with or implement a meaningful agenda for change. It is abundantly clear that, despite the clear welfare and scientific benefits of investing in a non-animal research future, the government has no strategy for even consistently reducing animal experiment levels. The government’s record on vivisection is largely one of empty rhetoric, missed opportunity and complacency compounded by scandalously inadequate levels of non-animal research funding. With its apparent policy vacuum and resistance to change, it is the UK government itself and not a lack of scientific potential that is actually impeding Britain’s move forward into a new era of scientific progress. Without a sea-change in attitude, we have little hope of capitalising on the enormous medical, product safety, environmental and public health benefits that non-animal science can bring.
Click here for a full breakdown of the 2005 statistics.
Footnotes:
1 Statistics of Scientific Procedures on Living Animals – Great Britain, 2005, released in a written statement by Parliamentary-Under-Secretary of State Joan Ryan MP, on 24 July 2006. Statistics presented as a command paper (6877). The complete document is available here.
2 Total procedures: 2,896,198, an increase of 1.4% from 2004 which is an extra 34,158 animals. (The recent trend of increase: 2.73 million animal experiments in 2002; 2.79 million animal experiments in 2003; 2.85 million in 2004 and now 2.9 million in 2005).
3 Total animals: 2,812,850.
4 Top EU figures UK (2005): 2,896,198; Germany (2004 latest figures available) 2,265,489 and France (2001 latest figures available) 2,212,294.
