Animal Testing Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
Jim Dickson
Main Page: Jim Dickson (Labour - Dartford)Department Debates - View all Jim Dickson's debates with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
(1 day, 8 hours ago)
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Irene Campbell
I agree wholeheartedly with everything the hon. Member said. I will speak more about organ on a chip and the need to move more quickly towards phasing out animals in research, but there is an opportunity to phase out dogs almost immediately.
It is important to note that figures released in the Home Office annual reports cover only animals protected by the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, and that individual animals can be used many times in different tests. However, the statistics count only the first time an animal is used in an experiment. The real number of experiments every year is likely much higher, as that data is not captured.
UK law, in the form of the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022, already recognises what we all know: that animals have emotions and feelings. The suffering caused to animals subjected to testing is a clear ethical problem, and the effectiveness of the experiments also calls into question the need for the obvious suffering, torture and painful death that many of them endure. Over 92% of drugs fail in human clinical trials after passing animal trials, and the failure rate increases to 99.6% for Alzheimer’s disease drugs. To quote Animal Free Research UK:
“Animals like monkeys don’t naturally develop Alzheimer’s, or live long enough to study ageing in the same way that humans experience it, so these outdated methods are simply not giving us the answers we need.”
Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for her great speech and her great work in this area, and I thank all the residents of my constituency who have signed the petition. I was pleased by the Government’s announcement of a long-term road map to reduce and phase out animal testing in scientific research, with key milestones for the abolition of specific tests, as my hon. Friend said, including an end to skin and eye irritation and skin sensitisation testing on animals this year. Does she agree that we should speed up the timetable as much as possible so that we can end animal testing at the earliest opportunity?
Irene Campbell
I agree with everything my hon. Friend said, and I will say more about that.