Animal Testing

Tracey Crouch Excerpts

Monday 19th February 2024 Westminster Hall

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

As always, Dame Caroline, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) on his excellent introduction to this debate, which set out all the issues in his usual informed style.

I have spoken about animal welfare on many occasions in Parliament. It has consistently remained at the forefront of the issues that my constituents write to me about. I am honoured to represent them in this debate. I have always maintained that we are a nation of animal lovers; I believe that the nearly 110,000 signatures that e-petition 633591 gained is proof of that, along with the 31,000 that e-petition 645885 has so far gathered.

In 2022, 2.76 million scientific procedures involving live animals were carried out in Great Britain. Of those, 55% were for experimental purposes; creating and breeding genetically altered animals accounted for the other 45%. A smidgen of good news is that between 2021 and 2022, there was a 10% decrease in the number of procedures, which reached the lowest numbers since 2002, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) pointed out. Although 4,122 procedures were used on dogs, that was a 2% decrease on 2021. The problem is that there are still too many of these experiments taking place.

In a recent YouGov poll, nearly three quarters of respondents were opposed to the testing of both ingredients and completed cosmetics on animals. This included 58% of people “strongly” opposed to both types of testing. While some 47% of people think that testing individual ingredients from medicines on animals is acceptable when there is no non-animal alternative, 30% think that it is not acceptable.

As somebody who has campaigned on these issues for a long time, I naturally fall into the majority view on animal testing with respect to cosmetics; I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth for his work on the issue as Secretary of State. When it comes to medicines, however, I tend to melt into a mess of complexity. Sometimes, personal experiences and those of our constituents can muddy a binary view on this issue. I have absolutely no doubt that the success of my breast cancer treatment is down to past experiments that have taken place on animals. It is hard to remove that from the equation.

At the excellent meeting I had with Animal Free Research UK, I was keen to explain my quandary. In the process of doing so, it was good not only to hear of the work being done on human-specific technologies at hubs such as the University of Exeter’s, but to learn of the work that the Association of Medical Research Charities is doing to improve transparency around animal research and animal welfare. It is worth noting that many of the AMRC’s members make it very clear that they support research involving animals only where there is no alternative. Given that cancer survival rates have doubled in the past 40 years, the scientific community ought to be thanked for its painstaking research and analysis. We know that sometimes this involves studying the biology of a disease in a whole body, and not just on individual cells or tissues. However, even those of us who are beneficiaries of that research want to know that good animal welfare practices have been employed and that the use of that research has been clinically justifiable.

How long can we keep doing animal testing when technology and NAMs are advancing so quickly? I would argue that if this country is to become a science superpower, we should lead by example and rapidly accelerate the use of animal-free research with a long-term ambition of zero animal experiments. We need the road map that my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington outlined. Bold action needs to start today if the UK is to keep pace with global action to support human-specific technologies. The US Congress has now passed the Food and Drug Administration Modernisation Act, facilitating the use of non-animal methods for drug testing, while the European Commission has committed to developing a road map for ultimately phasing out animal tests.

Animal Free Research UK and others have made some short and medium-term recommendations, which are reasonable asks. They note that the forthcoming Budget could be an opportunity to launch an ambitious funding call to develop human-specific technologies and attract private investment. They suggest providing dedicated transition grants to leverage the potential of human-specific tech and provide tax relief for companies that are working on these innovations. They also suggest establishing a non-animal science innovation hub, which I am sure would be really attractive to the next generation of scientists, whose animal welfare and environmental conscience seems so naturally embedded.

For what it is worth, I agree with the point that colleagues have made about ministerial responsibility and the challenges that it brings. However, I am pleased that we have a Science Minister who cares about these matters. Ending animal experiments can only lead to positive change in research methods. The Government have introduced a great deal of legislation on animal sentience and animal welfare in recent years, for which my constituents and I are truly grateful. Allowing the continued use of animal testing only undermines the achievements of that legislation. I hope that the House will join us today in upholding the Government’s commitment to animal welfare by supporting these excellent petitions and looking at how we can continue to reduce the use of animals in research so that one day it is not necessary at all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tracey Crouch]

For the record, I do not advocate or support any testing on dogs, particularly in the manner that the hon. Lady described. My point was that some past research on animals has enabled a great many positive outcomes for cancer patients, such as myself.

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the hon. Member for her intervention. I was not implying support for a specific type of testing, but making a general point: some have argued in the past that animal testing has been necessary to save human lives, and groups such as Understanding Animal Research argue that currently. Understanding Animal Research also gives the example of Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a lethal childhood disease, as a condition where canine models are effective.

Science and innovation can show the way out of this moral maze. To take the example of testing on dogs, NC3Rs, the UK’s National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research, has established a project to develop a virtual second species—a virtual dog—using historical data. On toxicity testing, the UK-based company XCellR8 has developed the AcutoX test as a humane alternative to the LD50 test, which involves giving increasing doses of toxic substances to groups of animals until 50% of them are killed.

Just this month, Newcells Biotech, a spinout from Newcastle University based in my constituency, raised over £2 million from the North East Fund for its models of the retina, kidney and lung, which are used in drug development and which reduce reliance on animal testing. The chief executive officer, Dr Mike Nicholds, told me:

“Over the last 10 years, advances in stem cell biology, 3-D bioprinting and high-content analytical methods such as transcriptomics have revolutionised our ability to build laboratory mimics of human tissues that can reduce the use of animals in the early stages of drug discovery. Pioneered in academia, these approaches are now established in mainstream biotech and importantly the regulators have moved to increasingly accept these non-animal models as reliable. Innovations such as retinal organoids, produced by Newcells Biotech, are being used globally to support the development of drugs that cure blindness, demonstrating the power of these new alternatives.”

He went on to say:

“While the prospect of fully replacing animal testing is likely to be at least a decade away, that prospect is no longer beyond the horizon and certainly significant reductions in animal testing will be driven through innovation and awareness within this timescale.”