Animal Experiments

(asked on 21st July 2014) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to her Department's publication Statistics of Scientific Procedures on Living Animals, Great Britain 2013, published on 10 July 2014, what assessment she has made of the reasons for the large number of procedures involving (a) sheep and (b) mice relative to the number of other animals used.


Answered by
 Portrait
Norman Baker
This question was answered on 1st September 2014

Mice are the most commonly used species due to long standing use in research, meaning that there is considerable existing data on the use of this species, their small size makes them convenient laboratory species, and most importantly now, is the availability of many genetically altered strains.

The vast majority of sheep are used for production of blood products, including normal blood and antisera. Their large size and ease of housing and handling make them ideal animals for the large scale production of these products (other species also used for this purpose, but to a much lesser extent, are rabbits, horses and rodents). Repeated blood sampling is often counted as a separate use, hence the large number of re-uses for this species.

Reticulating Splines