The EU has come up with a number of proposals for a new directive to protect animals used for scientific purposes - and I have submitted my official response to the consultation on this crucial animal welfare legislation.
I’m happy to say that these proposals do represent some degree of progress on the regulation of animal testing, but in my view, the scope of the directive needs to be significantly widened. There must be full protection for those animals which are bred and killed for their tissues and organs to be used in experiments. This must also include appropriate reporting and publishing of data. Project applications, ethical evaluation reports and retrospect assessment reports should be made publically available.
For many years, the Green MEPs have been calling for a well-funded, well-coordinated and executed EU-wide programme directed at simplifying the replacement of animal tests with non-animal methods. An EU Centre for Alternative Methods should be established to create strategies to replace the use of animals in procedures - and specific national centres could perform a similiar role.
A recent opinion poll found that 81 per cent of the public across Europe believes ‘that the new law should prohibit all experiments causing pain or suffering to primates’. I believe that the EU must introduce provisions to eliminate the use of primates in procedures, and prohibit their use in experiments that have no direct medical application (as proposed by the European Commission). The use of endangered species, animals taken from the wild, or feral or stray domestic animals should also be prohibited without exemptions.
I fully support the proposals to rehome or set free tested animals, to enforce unannounced national inspections at least twice each year, and to create a national animal welfare and ethics committee.
You can read my consultation response in full here.
