Lifeline Campaign: Vivisection Q&A

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WHAT IS VIVISECTION? • It literally means ‘cutting up’ – the practice of performing operations on live animals for the purpose of experimentation or scientific research. • It is cruel, unreliable and unnecessary. Most studies are curiosity-driven and have no tangible benefit to humans. • Vivisection leads to the unnecessary deaths of millions of animals per year and can involve drugging, burning, addicting, freezing, infecting, surgically mutilating and isolating animals, often with no pain relief or anaesthetics. HOW MANY ANIMALS ARE USED? • In 2017 almost 4 million procedures were carried out on live animals in the UK. A procedure is an act that causes an animal pain, suffering or distress, equivalent or greater than the insertion of a hypodermic needle. ANIMALS IN UNIVERSITY LABORATORIES • In Britain, 50% of animal experiments are carried out on university campuses. • In 2017, 3189 Project Licences were issued in the UK allowing animal experimentation. 78% of these were issued to universities. • In the last decade, there has been a rise of experiments in universities by 6%. • In 2017, over 813,000 experiments were banded as 'moderate' or 'severe' by the researchers themselves, with over 45,000 causing the most extreme and severe suffering – "testing where death is the end point and/or fatalities are expected". • The majority of animals used are mice but also primates, birds, rats, reptiles, guinea pigs, ferrets, rabbits, goats, pigs, sheep, cats and dogs are used. • Over 50% of experiments carried out on monkeys used in UK labs are born in Africa and captured/exported for the sole purpose of experimentation. These are highly intelligent animals who lead lonely, distressing and terrifying lives in cages. • Animals used for experiments suffer not just the tests, but also solitary confinement, cramped environments and over-crowding in cages, resulting in multi-breeding, fighting, cannibalism and suffocation. • Laboratory animals are killed by having their necks broken, being gassed with aversive and painful CO2, or having their heads cut off with scissors. Death may not be immediate.


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