Animal Testing Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
Manuela Perteghella
Main Page: Manuela Perteghella (Liberal Democrat - Stratford-on-Avon)Department Debates - View all Manuela Perteghella's debates with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
(1 day, 9 hours ago)
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Irene Campbell
I thank the hon. Member for his comments, and I agree with everything that he said. I will say a bit more about that later on.
Manuela Perteghella (Stratford-on-Avon) (LD)
I thank the hon. Member for her passionate speech. My constituents are proud of the UK’s reputation for high animal welfare standards, but they struggle to square that with the continued scale of animal testing and the lack of pace of change—as she highlighted, it has been slow for nearly 100 years now. Does she agree that the real question is not whether we can move away from animal testing, but how quickly we are prepared to do so?
Irene Campbell
I fully agree with everything the hon. Member said. I will go on to say more about that.
The petition refers specifically to dogs, as well as other animals that are used in testing. In 2024, 2.64 million procedures in British laboratories used animals—every minute of every day, five animals are used in research in the United Kingdom—over 16,000 experiments were carried out on specially protected species, including cats, dogs, horses and monkeys, and 1,651 dogs were used in experiments.