Painful Experiments?

• Over 60% of tests in the UK are conducted without the use of local or general anaesthetics
• 36% of UK project licences using animals are categorised as ‘mild’- but this can include taking blood samples, fitting cannulas, skin irritation tests and taking biopsies
• 59% experiments are categorised as ‘moderate’- this can include toxicity tests in which animals are fed or dosed with high concentrations of chemicals or drugs as well as many different types of surgery
• ‘Only’ 2% of project licences come under the highest category of ‘substantial’ severity, these include experiments such as those to create Parkinsonian monkeys and where the animals are expected to die from the effects of the study such as shellfish and Botox batch testing Substantial’ means ‘a major departure from an animal’s usual state of health or well-being’. It is absolutely clear that the proportion of animals undergoing procedures that would equate to this is far higher than 2%
• The remaining 3% of experiments are conducted entirely under anaesthesia and the animal is killed before it wakes up. But it may well have suffered for months because of the unnatural and confined conditions in which it is kept
• Only 11% of all procedures are conducted to satisfy medicines or chemical or food safety regulators

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