Issues and Trends in Animal Experiments
Labour’s broken promises - animal experiments increase by over 39%
Home Office statistics for animal experiments in 2008, confirm levels of animal testing in the UK have risen 39% since Labour came into power in 1997.
- Over 7 successive years, the number of animals used in experiments has steadily increased, year on year, and now tops over 3.5 million.
- In simple terms, this means that one million more animals were used in 2008 than in 2001.
- This upward trend returns the UK to a level of animal testing not seen since the 1980's.
And, all this has happened despite pre-election promises to deliver higher welfare standards for all animals, including those used in animal experiments. More…
This section offers an overview of the trends and issues, and lets the Home Office Statistics for 2008 speak for themselves.
To read Naturewatch press release click here
2007 saw highest number of animal experiments in 16 years

Year on year, the number of procedures using animals has increased since 2001. In 2008, 3,656,080 scientific procedures used animals.
In 2008, the number of animal experiments increased by 14% on the previous year.
Unfortunately, for the Government, a number of key trends are moving upwards, as we will see in the next pages. Unless the Government make serious efforts to remedy this, they will end up presiding over an increase in animal experiments since they came to power, not a decrease.
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