Volume 1

The revision of the EU Directive on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes / House of Lords. European Union Committee.

  • Great Britain. Parliament. House of Lords. European Union Committee
Date:
2009
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: The revision of the EU Directive on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes / House of Lords. European Union Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the validity of alternatives (indeed we are world leaders on this via the European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods) and should promote these as soon as they are shown to be scientifically valid, a concept that needs to be properly defined. 16. We also need more investment in alternative methods and greater support at the European level to make sure that promising techniques actually replace the animals they are designed to. As an example of how large the divide in spending between alternatives research and biomedical research is; the UK government via the Medical Research Council (MRC) and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) provided the UK National Centre for the 3Rs (NC3Rs) with £2.6 million in 2007-08 for research into alternatives. In contrast, the BBSRC and MRC together funded research and training in science and biomedical research totalling £643 million in 2007-08. (d) The approach the revised Directive should take 17. In the context of acute ethical controversy and dilemma, which inescapably accompany animal experiments, what should the overall legislative approach be? The answer must be that the legislation should reflect, as best it can, public opinion. It should not be a charter for the multibillion pound animal research and animal supply industries to carry on largely as they wish, away from the public gaze and applying only their ethical perspective or that of those they purport to represent. Moreover, the legislation must be sufficiently flexible to reflect public opinion as it evolves. 18. Divining public opinion is not easy. Opinion surveys need their health warnings (even though the European Union expressly relies on them when developing legislative policy [Eurobarometer surveys]). But nor can they be disregarded when they produce inconvenient results, and nor should legislators in this area adopt the paternalistic approach that they know what is best for people, despite what they may say. The BUAV, through the Europe-wide coalition it leads, recently commissioned an opinion survey from leading pollsters YouGoy, in six representative EU countries—the UK, France, Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic and Sweden. The results, set out in Annex 2, are startling, and are remarkably consistent across the six countries. Very large majorities were opposed to any experiments on primates, cats and dogs causing pain or suffering (as all must inevitably do) and to experiments on any species causing severe suffering. A similarly large majority wants all information about animal experiments to be in the public domain, save that which is confidential or which would identify individuals. 19. Most telling of all, 79% of respondents will only tolerate animal experiments, if at all, where they are for life-threatening or serious human conditions. Included in the 79% are, of course, the very many who, as is apparent from a succession of other opinion polls, share the BUAV’s view that animal experiments should not be permitted for any purpose. But, at the very least, the new directive, if it is to reflect rather than ride roughshod over public opinion, should limit animal experiments to those for important medical research or other overwhelming societal need. 20. The research industry always focuses on life-threatening and debilitating human illnesses in its public pronouncements and lobbying and seeks, disingenuously, to give the impression that all animal experiments are for this purpose. It creates a kind of Trojan horse by which animal experiments for all kinds of inessential purposes receive the PR shield of those conducted for important objectives. Regrettably, both the media and many politicians contribute to this deceit on the public by failing to investigate thoroughly or report in a balanced way. We attach as Annex 3 the recent statement by MEP Mojca Drcar Murko!? when she took the extraordinary step of asking for her name to be removed as draftsperson of the Environment Committee opinion on the Commission’s proposal. She complained about what can only be described as the emotional blackmail employed by industry: “This goes in particular for the following thesis [advanced by industry]: industry is trying hard to reduce, refine or replace animal experiments. No legislative incentives are therefore necessary. The consequence of this was the equation ‘should you not allow that the experiments continue without (too much) interference from outside—people/children will be dying’. Conservative and some liberal members of the EP environment committee followed their line and accused me of being responsible for ‘killing the research and therefore killing children .. .’.” 21. It is worth stressing that nothing animal protection groups such as the BUAV are proposing would lead to the slightest risk of children dying. 22. As we shall explain, animal experiments take place, in their millions, for all sorts of purposes which have nothing to do with finding the cure to cancer, Alzheimer’s and so forth. We concede, for these purposes, that basic research which has as its objective the making of a real contribution to finding the clue to serious human '2 The full statement has not been published in the Report.