Animal Testing

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Michael Wheeler]

Of course. It will surprise my hon. Friend not at all that I agree. I will come to the wider context and wider solutions, but at this time, although we can look to improve the situation, we must absolutely look to make sure that current regulations are enforced as we speak, and not let slide, because there have been hundreds of animals whose suffering breached the current legal framework and should have been prevented.

Some of the most disturbing incidents involve something as basic as access to food and water. In 2024, there were nine separate cases in which animals were not provided with adequate food or hydration, and 24 animals died as a result. In another case, a mother was removed from her cage and killed, leaving seven unweaned pups to starve to death. The report catalogues a litany of serious failures. Animals were reused, in second experiments, without proper authorisation. Others were kept alive past what most people would consider a humane end point. They were left to suffer as tumours grew too large, or body weight fell dangerously low. In one case, misidentification of sex led to regulated procedures being performed on seven pregnant mice.

The failures affect a wide range of animals. Primates suffered injuries from faulty equipment, had tails trapped in cage doors or were left without food overnight. A freedom of information request revealed that in one case an incident deemed by ASRU to be a “minor breach” involved a dog being kept alive despite having suffered severe swelling of the parotid salivary glands as a result of the procedures that it had been through, before eventually being euthanised.

Given the gravity of the incidents, we should expect robust enforcement. Instead, we see a regulatory regime that is alarmingly weak. In three quarters of non-compliance cases, the only response was “inspector advice”.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman. He is bringing forward some very harrowing stories, and they are certainly hard to accept. Non-compliance with animal welfare laws on farms in Northern Ireland was detected in more than 21% of those inspected. It is clear that welfare inspection is the key to making them acknowledge the regulations and to ensuring that they do what they should be doing. Does the hon. Member agree that non-compliance is best detected through inspection and that there must be more focus on inspection rates, to ensure that issues can be dealt with?

[Michael Wheeler]

I of course agree, and I have some information that will illustrate the point and the importance of inspections. In 2024, just 68 establishments were audited across Great Britain. Only 10 of the inspections were unannounced. That represents just 15% of inspections, which is down from 63% of inspections in 2018. The issue is further exacerbated by some elements of those audits being carried out remotely. Nearly 70% of non-compliance incidents were self-reported, which raises a troubling question about how much more is going undetected in the absence of regular, independent spot checks.

ASRU’s current regime of regulatory reform includes increasing the number of inspectors by March to 22 full-time equivalents, up from 14.5, but incremental tweaks to oversight will not solve the underlying problem. In 2024 alone, 2.64 million scientific procedures were carried out on animals. That scale of activity cannot be meaningfully overseen through marginal staffing increases.

The wider issue is that we continue to allow legally sanctioned animal suffering. For instance, some licences permit deliberate deprivation. Primates’ entire daily food intake can be restricted so that food can be used as a reward for correct task performance during sessions lasting up to six hours. Rats, meanwhile, can go without water for up to 22 hours a day, over a week, to encourage them to consume liquids containing potentially aversive substances. Thousands of procedures still rely on controversial tests such as LD50 toxicity testing and the forced swim test—an outdated model that the Government acknowledge has limited scientific value. Licence summaries reveal the severity of authorised suffering: thousands of animals undergo painful procedures without analgesia because pain relief might interfere with the results.

Equally concerning is the failure to uphold the core legal principle at the heart of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986. Section 2A is clear that scientifically satisfactory non-animal methods must be used wherever possible, yet an expert report commissioned by the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research identified a “system-wide failure” to replace animals where alternatives already exist. Home Office summaries show that licences have been granted even when non-animal methods are clearly available. In one example, animals were being used as an intermediary step in heart disease research, despite well-known anatomical differences that limit the relevance of that research to humans.

It is time for us to find another way. More than 92% of drugs that succeed in animal tests do not end up being used by patients. That is primarily due to poor efficacy and safety issues that were not predicted by animal testing. We are now at the point where human-specific technologies, using human cells, tissues, artificial intelligence and advanced modelling, offer faster, safer and more relevant results. Pioneering work projects have been taking place for decades, leading to breakthroughs such as mini-hearts that accurately model human cardiac disease without harming animals.