The government is planning to change the law that controls all animal experiments in the UK. That could mean even less protection for animals in laboratories than there is today. Please take action to let the government know there must be no weakening of our current rules.
Last year, the EU produced a new directive to regulate animal experiments – which means that the UK has to amend its own law, the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986. PETA worked hard to get the best result for animals when the directive was going through the European Parliament, and as a result, some of the suffering that animals endure in laboratories in many EU countries, whose existing laws were poor, will certainly stop. However, while the directive is a minor improvement on the current UK law in a handful of ways, in many others it is actually worse.
The directive does allow countries to keep any higher standards of animal protection they already have, but shockingly, the government has not committed to preserving higher standards in the UK. That means, among other things, the following:
- Special protection for cats, dogs and horses could be lost, meaning more experiments on them and more suffering.
- Government inspections of laboratories could be cut by more than 90 per cent, making it almost impossible to detect illegal abuses, failures and bad conditions.
- Exceptions could be made to the current ban on the most severe and prolonged untreated suffering.
- Live animals could be used for student doctors, nurses and paramedics to train and practice on.
- Cage sizes for many animals could be made even smaller.
These and many other changes could see even more pain and abuse for the 3 1/2 million animals used and killed in British laboratories each year and could result in those numbers rising even higher.
The government just held a public consultation on possible changes to the law. PETA responded with an in-depth technical submission, and 2,700 PETA supporters also provided comments via our website. Now the responses to the consultation are being considered, and the Home Office minister responsible, Lynne Featherstone MP, will make a decision about how the current law should be amended this autumn. It is vital that the government understand that the public never will accept any reduction in the already weak regulations surrounding animal experiments.
