Cruelty Revealed in Government Reports

The Home Office department that regulates animal experiments – the Animals in Science Regulation Unit – finally published its annual reports for 2019 to 2021 at the end of October. Historically, these reports were released shortly after the year they cover, so the 2019 report has finally emerged more than two years ‘late’.

This delay is extremely worrying as the reports detail the cases of ‘non-compliance’ with the law on animal experiments or the conditions of licences granted to animal researchers. In the past, cases have included animals drowning, dying of thirst, starving to death, botched killings and animals falling out of moving vehicles. These reports are one of the few chances to discover how animals really live – and die – in laboratories in Great Britain.

The newest reports, once again, describe chilling examples of neglect and incompetence, unauthorised procedures, breeding more animals than authorised and failures to provide adequate food and water. These include:

Click through the galleries below to read some of the non-compliances from 2019-2021, which numbered more than 320 cases.

It is worth noting that monkeys, dogs, horses and cats have ‘special protection’ under these rules. Yet, these Annual Reports show that between 2019 to 2021, the number of non-compliance cases involving monkeys was 16 and 33 cases involved dogs. Some cases do not report the number of animals involved, so we don’t know how many were affected.

If those animals who are supposed to be afforded greater protection are consistently being failed, the picture for the other animals is even worse.