We’ve won the Lush prize!

Animal Aid were shortlisted for this global award, alongside many amazing projects, so it really is a huge honour and privilege to win. The Lush Prize has different categories, such as ‘lobbying’, ‘training’ and ‘science’, and the ‘public awareness’ category had entrants from the UK, France, Chile, the Netherlands and the US.

We were also shortlisted for the Training award for our Future of Science conferences, which introduces sixth form students to the world of non-animal research to show that they can continue in modern scientific research, with no need to use animals.

Animal Aid has been campaigning against animal experiments since we were founded in 1977. In recent years we have focused on the promotion of ‘better science’ – animal-free research methods that produce more accurate and reliable results than anything involving animals. It really is time for better science! 

Last year, ahead of World Day for Animals in Laboratories, we took our campaign to high streets across the UK to highlight the sheer cruelty and nonsense of relying on animal tests which were invented nearly 100 years ago, when photos were still in black and white and people listened to music on gramophones! Animal Aid held a parliamentary reception to inform MPs about the issues and urge them to back better science and we launched a petition to demonstrate the strength of public feeling behind this campaign. We hand delivered our petition to the Home Office earlier this year, complete with thousands of signatures.   

In addition to speaking with the public and politicians, Animal Aid really wanted to support better science. We funded an animal-free replacement to the ‘lethal dose’ oral toxicity tests known as ‘LD50’. This replacement is called AcutoX, and two years after our initial grant to XCellR8, who developed AcutoX, it is commercially available, and is now saving animals lives! Following the success of AcutoX, we have since provided funding to develop another humane replacement, this time for the cruel ‘LC50’ inhalation tests. 

Raising public awareness of lethal dose animal tests would not have been possible without our wonderful supporters who have signed our petition, shared our posts on social media and contacted their MPs. Thank you. We’d also like to thank the Lush Prize judges for recognising our work and for the prize money which will enable us to fight even harder for animals being used in all experiments. 

Together we will bring about an end, not only to lethal dose animal tests, but all animal experiments.