Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether she has made a recent assessment of whether animal testing is needed in the UK.

The Home Office Regulator will only grant licences to use animals in science where there are no alternatives, where the number of animals used is the minimum needed to achieve the scientific benefit, and where the potential harm to animals is limited to that needed to achieve the scientific benefit.

The Government is supporting and accelerating advances in biomedical science and technologies to reduce reliance on the use of animals in research. UK Research and Innovation provides core funding for the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement, and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs), which works to drive the uptake of new methodologies, including alternatives to animals.

The Government is committed to the development of alternatives to using animals in scientific procedures and continues to actively support and fund the development and dissemination of the 3Rs (replacement, reduction and refinement) for the use of animals in scientific procedures. This is achieved through UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)’s funding of the National Centre for the 3Rs, which works nationally and internationally to drive the uptake of non-animal technologies, and through research into the development of alternatives by UKRI.