World Day for Laboratory Animals

World Day for Laboratory Animals

Laboratory animal stories are kept low key and rarely pierce through into mainstream media, which means the public are generally left in the dark about the number and types of animals affected, and for the majority of us, the treatments and products that are tested for our supposed benefit.

Enter World Day for Laboratory Animals, a bid to raise awareness and "reflect upon the pain and suffering caused to millions of animals in the name of science - and for the supposed benefit of humankind." The event is picking up momentum and is recognised by the United Nations, and to mark the event on 24 April, Animal Aid will launch a booklet on vivisection called Bad Ethics, Bad science, which outlines the harsh reality of animal testing and explores both the scientific and ethical arguments against the mistreatment of animals in experimentation.

Animal testing numbers - UK

Figures are hard to come by, but according to a report by the statistics of scientific procedures on living animals in Great Britain for 2008, just under 3.7 million scientific procedures were carried out, an increase of 14 percent on the previous year. The increase is due mainly to the increase of experiments on animals like fish, mice, amphibians, sheep and turkeys. The use of non-human primates in experiments rose 16 percent from the previous year to 600 procedures.

The bulk of experimentation is carried out on rodents, accounting for 77 percent of total procedures. According to the report, experiments on mice and fish were for fundamental research, applied studies for human medicine or dentistry, and breeding.

The report confirms that the number of procedures in the UK has almost halved since 1976, when there were almost six million procedures on animals. Depressingly the number of procedures since 2000 has increased by a 37 percent. The report sites global trends and the economic climate for the increase.

In 2008, 55 percent of the animals undergoing procedures were directed at a particular body part, the most frequent being the immune system (55 percent), and the nervous system (12 percent).

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