UK animal activists furious over rise in lab testing despite govt promise

Pro-animal organisations are fuming after it emerged on Thursday that laboratory experimentation involving animals has actually risen in the UK, contrary to a pledge by the Tory-led government to cut such experimentation.

Home office data revealed that experimentation involving animals such as rabbits and primates (monkeys and apes) rose to as much as 4.1 million last year, the highest number of tests on such creatures since figures started being published in 1986.

It is the third consecutive rise since the coalition government came to power, despite its promise to reduce the often barbaric procedures on live creatures.

During 2013 more than 4.1 million experiments were carried out on animals including rodents, fish and primates.

The latest figures showed an increase of 11,554 tests from 2012. This was up from 3.8 million tests in 2011.

Controversial procedures on monkeys increased by 7 per cent in 2013, with 3,236 experiments carried out on 2,202 primates. They included deliberately brain-damaging marmosets to seek a cure for Parkinson's disease.

Michelle Thew, chief executive of the British Union Against Vivisection, said, ''Yet again more broken promises and more lives lost in this tragic failure to reduce animal experiments. The government has now failed for a third year on its post-election pledge to work to reduce the number of animals used in research.''

Of the tests carried out in the UK last year, two million - or 51 per cent - involved breeding genetically modified animals and those with harmful mutations. This was an increase of 6 per cent on the previous year.

Animals that saw an increase in tests on them were mice, rats, sheep, rabbits, gerbils, reptiles and guinea pigs.

But tests on birds, amphibians, hamsters and cattle reduced.

In 2010 the coalition government stated, ''We will end the testing of household products on animals and work to reduce the use of animals in scientific research.''

Troy Seidle, director at Humane Society International, said that apart from dealing a blow to animal welfare, ''it also represents a crisis for the quality of our medical research because it shows we're still locked in to failing animal models that can delay medical progress.

''In years to come we will look back on this era of animal experiments and wonder why we tolerated it for so long,'' he added.

Since 1995, the number of tests on animals has increased by 52 per cent, with 1.4 million more procedures carried out.