Animal Experiments Increase By 40 Per Cent Since 2000

Today’s publication of the annual “Statistics of Scientific Procedures on Living Animals” for 2011, compiled by the Home Office, has once again shown a disturbing, but predicted, increase in the number of animals that are experimented on in UK laboratories, say the National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS). A total of 3.79 million experiments on animals were carried out in 2011, an increase of 68,100 (2 per cent) on 2010. However, the most shocking statistic is that the number of procedures carried out since 2000 has increased by 40% (1.08 million). Whilst the numbers of primates and dogs have fallen in the past year, there have been sharp increases in the use of cats and pigs, an extremely worrying development. This upward trend confirms the UK as one of Europe’s biggest animal users, despite the widespread availability of advanced alternative methods. It also illustrates that the government is ignoring the focus on animal replacement in the new EU Directive on animal research, which will be incorporated into UK law next year. NAVS Chief Executive, Jan Creamer, “At a time when the world is moving to advanced techniques to replace animals and this has been underlined as the aim of the new European Directive, it is a national disgrace that the UK is among the leading users of animals in Europe. Even worse, the Government’s own body set up to develop advanced methods to replace this unnecessary animal suffering is funding extremely painful and distressing brain research on primates, when there are non-invasive scanning methods on humans available. It’s an embarrassing indictment of the state of British science.” A summary of the statistics, as provided by the Home Office is as follows:

1. Just over 3.79 million scientific procedures were started in Great Britain in 2011, increasing 2 per cent (+68,100). Breeding of genetically modified (GM) animals and harmful mutants (HM), mainly mice, remained stable, accounting for 1.62 million procedures.
2. Excluding the breeding of GM and HM animals, the total number of procedures increased in 2011 (an increase of +71,300 or +3%, from 2.10 million to 2.18 million).
3. There were increases in numbers of procedures for several species, for example cats (+26%), pigs (+37%), birds (+14%) and fish (+15%). There were falls for several species, for example rats (-11%), guinea pigs (-16%), dogs (-21%), and non-human primates (-47% with new-world monkeys -68% and old-world monkeys -41%).
4. There was an increase (+2%) in the numbers of procedures for safety testing (toxicology) to 399,000, due to increased use of fish in regulatory toxicology, with a higher proportion carried out to meet more than one legislative/regulatory requirement (75% compared with 72% in 2010). Most toxicology procedures are carried out in the commercial sector where the number of procedures also rose (+1%).
5. The number of non-toxicology procedures increased 2 per cent to 3.39 million, reflecting the higher numbers of procedures carried out in universities (+7%), particularly fundamental research. The increase for nontoxicology included increases in physiology (+115,100), immunology (+62,000) and parasitology (+22,000) whilst ecology (-30,300), anatomy (-27,000), biochemistry (-11,900) and cancer research (-10,200) fell.
6. There were 1.08 million more procedures than in 2000 (+40%) mostly accounted for by breeding to produce GM and HM animals (+918,000, of which mice +795,000). Excluding such breeding, the total number of procedures was slightly higher than in 2000 (+8% or +159,900).

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