Today, the Home Office released new statistics revealing
that 5.53 million mice, rats, fish, dogs, primates, and other
animals, every one an individual with emotions, worries, fears, and
pain receptors like our own, were used in experiments in Britain
last year. A staggering 1.81 million of them languished in cages
without being used in experiments before being killed or simply –
although it wasn’t simple...Request free
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Today, the Home Office released new
statistics revealing that 5.53 million mice, rats,
fish, dogs, primates, and other animals, every one an
individual with emotions, worries, fears, and pain
receptors like our own, were used in experiments in Britain
last year.
A staggering 1.81 million of them languished in cages
without being used in experiments before being killed or
simply – although it wasn’t simple for them - dying, purely
for being the wrong sex, for not carrying the right genetic
code, or as a result of drastic overbreeding to feed the
laboratory supply chain. Please find below a statement
regarding the statistics from Dr Julia Baines, science
policy adviser at PETA.
Shame on our government for
allowing experimenters to go to breeders
and order animals with a whole array of
specific criteria as easily as if they were
ordering takeaway meals.
All animals in laboratories
suffer from immense fear alone, regardless
of whether they are used in an experiment
or not. Mice, who make up 80 per cent of
the 1.81 million animals who were bred but
not used for experimentation, are kept in
barren, sterile cages no bigger than a
shoebox, denied all opportunity to dig,
climb, explore, or socialise in their
family groups, as they would in nature.
Their ears are often hole-punched, a crude
way to identify them, the ends of their
tails may be snipped off, or a toe may even
be removed, causing immense suffering.
Animals in laboratories actively try to
escape from their enclosures, attempting to
gnaw through cage bars. In 2018, no animal
should be forced to live like this, in
conditions so alien to their natural
habitat.
Animals are not ours to
experiment on or use in any other way. As
Britain prepares to leave the European
Union, it must commit to ending this cruel
exploitation of animals and to investing
instead in superior, cutting-edge,
non-animal research methods.
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