Figures released today by the Home Office demonstrate that there is a still a massive – and growing – problem with the use of animals in experiments in the UK, which must be tackled by the government as soon as possible.
A total of 3,642,517 animals were used in a total of 3,724,726 scientific procedures in the UK in 2010. Over the last decade, animal use has increased by 37% and the UK continues to use more than a quarter of the total numbers used in the 27 EU member states.
Despite a Conservative manifesto pledge last year to reduce the use of animals in experiments in the UK, today’s figures show a 3% increase compared with 2009, with 101,265 more animals used last year. The number of procedures also rose by 3% - an increase of 105,186.
The number of procedures on New World monkeys (marmosets and tamarins) increased by 78% from 619 to 1,103, involving a total of 674 animals. Procedures on Old World monkeys (macaques) reduced by 2%, although the total number of monkeys used was still unacceptably high at 1,975. Most of these primates (1,971) were used in experiments connected with human medicine or dentistry.
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There were increases in the numbers of procedures for:
- breeding of genetically modified (GM) or harmful mutant (HM) animals (+87,000 or +6%, amounting to 1,621,012 procedures involving 1,618,516 animals),
- fundamental biological research (+120,000 or +10%, amounting to 1,294,503 procedures involving 1,267,664 animals)
- veterinary medicine (+19,600, or +14%, amounting to 160,482 procedures using 157,847 animals),
- protection of man, animals or the environment (+2,900 or +4% amounting to 75,797 using 75,558 animals).
There were falls in the numbers of procedures for:
- human medicine/dentistry (-119,500 or -19%, amounting to 523,388 procedures using 511,784 animals);
- direct diagnosis (-5,600 or -11% amounting to 46,707 procedures using 8,335 animals).
Procedures involving the breeding of GM/HM animals went up by 6% (an increase of 87,000) to 2,002,247 procedures. The statistics show that the numbers of these procedures have increased every year for the last 15 years and exceed the numbers carried out on genetically ‘normal’ animals.
Commercial organisations accounted for 27% of the 3.7 million procedures, and universities 48%. The number of procedures carried out in the university sector has been increasing fairly steadily since the need of the 1980s, and increased again by 10% in 2010 to 1.77 million.
The continued increase in animal use runs counter to the aspiration of new European legislation aimed at reducing the number of animal experiments. As it prepares to transpose the new directive, the UK government must pursue every opportunity to achieve a reduction in these disappointing figures.
Once again, OneKind calls on the government and the scientific community to focus much more on the modern alternatives to the outdated use of animals in experiments, with a view to replacing them altogether as soon as possible.
Support the OneKind campaign to protect animals used in laboratories in the UK.