I recently received an email from a journalist, who despite not being routinely involved in this debate could easily see the flaws in recent antiviv claims:
"The Hadwen Trust have said that a new European Commission report puts the UK at the top of the animal research rankings. However, if you look at the notes on the bottom, you’ll see that the figure they use is not even from the Commission report!
… they said they used the UK estimate for animal research because European figures didn’t account for certain types of research. How the UK figure can therefore be used as a comparison is a bit of a mystery to me!"
See Dr Hadwen Trust website, News, New Statistics: Britain still the animal testing capital of Europe, 9th Nov 2007
Unlike the rest of Europe, the UK counts breeding of GM animals as a procedure meaning that when GM animals aren’t counted we aren’t actually in the top spot. That you have to compare like with like – just because France, for instance, doesn’t count GM animals it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have thousands running around the lab – seems to have passed the folk at DrHT by. However, ‘UK is number 2 in Europe’ doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. It’s sad that one of the supposedly respectable antiviv groups has resorted to these tactics.
The UK collects and publishes the fullest details of animal research undertaken in the world, as well as being acknowledged by the antis as being "at the forefront of cutting edge non-animal research"(1). Add to this that DrHT’s very own Gill Langley recognises that UK animal research is a "very tiny minority of research effort"(2), and the negative comments look very silly indeed!
It would benefit animal welfare more if the DrHT had instead held these facts up as an example to other countries.
I’d actually say that it is a source of pride that the UK is the world leader in conducting top quality animal research that is carefully regulated and fully accounted for.
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(1) National Anti-Vivisection Society & Lord Dowding Fund for Humane Research (Nov 2002) Monkeys & Men
(2) Gill Langley (17th July 2001) Oral evidence to House of Lords Select Committee on Animals in Scientific Procedures
