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CRUELTY AT SCOTTISH LAB EXPOSED
Documents and photographs leaked to Animal Defenders Intentional (ADI)
provide a chilling insight into the world of contract research, where laboratories are
paid to conduct animal experiments on behalf of manufacturers of products such as
drugs, chemicals, household and industrial substances.
Inveresk laboratories, near Edinburgh, offers its clients dogs, monkeys,
rats, mice, rabbits, pigs, guinea pigs, goats, cows, birds and fish for experimentation
and claims to be responsible for approximately 1% of all experiments taking place in
the UK - over 25,000 animals every year. Experiments like these are rarely published
so this is a unique insight into the world of commercial animal experimentation.
The Inveresk reports show:
- Miscalculations in dosing resulting in severe suffering, death and
premature termination of studies.
- Researchers running out of the test substance, half way through a study.
- A test substance passing its expiry date before the end of the experiment,
whilst dosing of the animals continued.
- Animal tests being conducted when human studies were already underway.
- Animal results ignored - human studies continued after bad animal results.
- Chemicals accidentally pumped into dogs' lungs instead of their stomachs.
Horrific suffering is revealed. Side effects listed in Inveresk's own reports
included: dogs foaming at the mouth; vomiting; bleeding from the gums with diarrhoea; rats
choking to death on paint; monkeys subdued, hunched in their cages, suffering body
tremors; liquid faeces and swollen penises.
The ADI report discusses the conduct of experiments, the suffering of the
animals and the alternatives which are already available (or could be made so).
ADI Chief Executive Jan Creamer said: "This reveals the true horror of
regulatory testing on animals and insight into the enormous level of suffering and
carnage that will be brought about by the animal testing programme proposed in the
EU's new chemical regulations. Inveresk is the type of laboratory that will be
undertaking the new EU chemical testing programme. REACH (Registration,
Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals) is the new EU chemicals testing strategy:
around 30,000 chemicals produced in high volumes will be tested on millions of animals.
"UK and EU regulations require that animals should only be used when necessary; that
non-animal methods be sought. And yet we see at Inveresk, experiments on animals when
human clinical trials are being undertaken, blunders during experimental procedures which
cause animals severe suffering, animals being choked to death with paint for unnecessary
tests.
"All of this is unnecessary. ADI has proposed a new non-animal testing
strategy for the new chemical regulations that uses advanced techniques
which will deliver the protection for humans and the environment that we all
want to see, but without wasting animals' lives in cruel and unnecessary tests."
http://www.ad-international.org/download_files/animal_experiments/inveresk.pdf
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