What we found at the lab
- The UK government is failing in its legal obligation to enforce the use of non-animal alternatives where they exist and to ensure that, if animals are used, then it should be the minimum number and with the minimum amount of suffering.
- Despite a UK and EU ban on the use of animals for cosmetic testing, there is a loophole in the law which allows animals to continue to suffer dreadfully in tests for a product that, although licensed for medical use, could very well end up being used – quite legally – for cosmetic purposes.
- The appalling suffering inflicted on thousands of animals in cruel, crude and archaic tests. Animals kept in small, virtually barren cages that failed to meet their behavioural and social needs.
- The suffering and death of hundreds of mice every week in the cruel and controversial LD50 poisoning test for the highly toxic substance botulinum toxin, commonly known as botox.
- The use of rabbits in pyrogenicity tests during which they are injected with a substance and forcibly restrained by their necks in stocks for hours at a time - individual rabbits are then routinely re-used in the test.
- Some animals suffered in tests that are no longer required by national and international regulations. This makes a mockery out of the often made claim that companies have to do tests just because regulators require them.
