FAQ

Detailed and fully-referenced answers to commonly asked questions about the use of animals in research and testing.

1) Isn’t animal testing banned now?

Sadly, no it’s not. Many think that animal research ended years ago, or perhaps that it is still only carried out for particular products (e.g. cosmetics or drugs), but  hundreds of millions of animals are still used in laboratories worldwide every year.

2) What are animals used for in research?

There are many different categories of animal use but broadly speaking, they are used for either experimental research (e.g. basic or applied research) or regulatory (toxicity) testing (e.g. to test new cosmetics, industrial chemicals or drugs). Also, there is a global industry based on the breeding, sale and transport of animals, including  genetically modified (GM) animals, with large scale companies operating worldwide.

3) How many animals are used?

Around 12 million animal experiments (‘procedures’) are carried out across the 27 member states of the EU, plus the UK and Norway each year (statistics from 2023). These numbers only include live animals; many more millions of animals are bred and killed to use their organs and tissues in research.

Collection and publication of statistics on animal experiments varies greatly across the world. Globally, an estimated 192 million animals are used annually. This figure is an estimate because some countries don’t publish or even count the number of animals they use and there may be few or no laws to protect them in many regions. Many animal testing statistics are ‘hidden’ too. For example, animal tests conducted in many non-EU countries to meet EU legal requirements (e.g. for chemicals legislation such as REACH)  go uncounted.

Some countries include some animals in their official statistics but not others. For example, the USA does not include mice, rats, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians, following exclusion of these species from the US Animal Welfare Act (AWA) due to a modification that was made known as  the ‘Helms Amendment’. Therefore, official USA figures provide less than 1% of the true number of animals used nationally each year (which is thought to be over 110 million). Animal protection organisations continue to campaign for the abolition of the Helms Amendment to allow excluded species to be rightfully included in the AWA.

 

Click below to access the latest officially published animal research statistics:

For the United Kingdom

For Ireland

For the European Union and Norway (scroll down to Statistical Reports)

For Switzerland

For the USA

For Canada

4) Which animals are used?

Just about every species of animal is used in research in some way. The majority are mice, rats and fish, but others include rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, dogs, monkeys, cats, horses, sheep, ferrets, pigs (including minipigs), birds, cattle and many more.

5) Is it true that animals used in laboratories don’t suffer?

Sadly this is totally untrue. It is recognised in law (e.g. in the EU and UK) that animals suffer in procedures, such that the level of pain and suffering that an animal may experience must be categorised as Mild, Moderate, Severe or ‘Non-Recovery’.

Aside from the suffering of use directly in procedures, animals suffer in other ways, such as confinement, maternal deprivation, aggression from being housed in unnatural groups and also the fear and distress of long distance transport to laboratories. Genetically modified animals may also have harmful mutations to induce disease or deformities.

Animals also suffer when their organs, blood or tissues are ‘harvested’ for research. For example, horses are used to supply blood, and foetal calf serum (FCS) is extracted from pregnant cows in slaughterhouses.

Animal suffering continues in many countries with no legislation or oversight to protect them; Lush Prize’s 2024 report on animal research in Africa found that only eight of the 54 countries on the continent have animal welfare legislation which provides some provisions around animal research, but there are reported problems with oversight and enforcement in at least six of them. However, this is not a problem confined only to the African continent. For example, many countries in Asia also have little or no animal welfare scrutiny.

6) Isn’t animal testing only carried out when ‘necessary’ or when required ‘by law’ when there are no alternatives?

These are all very misleading yet popular claims. Regulatory tests are legally required to assess the safety of a substance (e.g. a new drug or chemical). Just one test may use hundreds or even thousands of animals when parent and offspring animals are used (e.g. in reproductive tests).

However, though regulatory guidelines recommend the use of animals*, they are just that – guidelines – i.e. technically, there is often no concrete legal requirement to use animals and regulators frequently state that they are ‘open’ to review of non-animal methods. But there is a major difference ‘on paper vs in practice’. The reality and routine use of animals for decades means that researchers keep using animals and regulators keep expecting to see results from animal tests. As a result, new non-animal models are often rejected or it is requested that tests are performed on animals to validate the new methods, which remains a major obstacle in the shift towards modern, fit-for-purpose animal-free science. This also maintains a collective view that animal use must continue and has been termed ‘lock in’ of animal research.

A further critical point is that regulatory testing accounts for 10-15% of total animal procedures (e.g. statistics show that in 2022 13% of procedures in the EU were for regulatory use and in 2023 the figure for the United Kingdom was 11%.

Therefore, the vast majority (around 85-90%) of animal use is for experiments which have no legal requirement. This includes the breeding of genetically modified (GM) animals to try to mimic human conditions, e.g cancer, stroke, heart disease and Alzheimer’s, which remain poorly understood and lack adequate treatments. Many diseases are specific only to humans, so GM animals are used to try to artificially create them.

*For drugs testing, tests are usually conducted in two species, rodent (e.g. mice or rats) and a ‘non-rodent’ species (e.g. dogs, monkeys or minipigs)

7) Why is animal research of concern as poor science?

Non-human animals can’t adequately predict how humans react to chemicals (e.g. drugs) or how we develop diseases, largely due to many species differences. ‘Uncertainty factors’ are routinely included, but despite this, animals are still widely considered as poor surrogates for humans. The argument for using animals is that they are a ‘living system’ (in-vivo). However, they’re the wrong system, as many species differences exist between humans and animals from simple to more complex microbiological levels, meaning that animals do not reliably predict human responses to chemicals, drugs or how diseases develop. This is well known and has resulted in a global industry to breed and supply genetically modified (GM) animals for research, yet the problems persist.

Animal tests may show drugs to be safe or effective which then prove to be dangerous or even fatal in humans. High profile disasters such as the TGN1412, BIAL and Vioxx tragedies highlight the risks posed by reliance on animal testing which failed to adequately detect disastrous results in humans. Similarly, drugs which are potentially safe and effective in humans may be rejected on the basis of adverse reactions (toxicity) in animal tests.

As a result, there is a grave lack of ‘bench to bedside’ translation from animals to humans. For example, positive concordance in drugs tested in both animals and humans for liver toxicity has been found to be only 33% (rats), 27% (dogs) and 50% (monkeys). New non-animal methods based on advanced human-cell- and tissue-derived techniques such as ‘Liver-on-a-Chip’ models, are advancing and showing great performance. These models demonstrate how drug research could be substantially improved and provide a more human-relevant way forward in detecting adverse effects, to transition away from animal methods which cannot predict human responses adequately.

 

The problem is clear to see in both the drug and chemicals industries, with over 90% of new drugs failing clinical (human) trials after being considered successful in preclinical tests which remain largely based on animals. This failure rate has remained the same for decades. Of several thousand known human conditions, only 500 or so have treatments available. Similarly in the chemicals industry, 70-90% of substances are considered to have very poor or limited safety data available (if any) on how safe they are to humans and the environment.

This is after decades of a system predominantly reliant on animal testing. A key example is the rodent cancer bioassay which takes up to five years to plan, conduct and analyse the results for just one substance, including two years to complete. The assay uses 860 rats and costs between US$2-4 million. Given how costly and time consuming it is, concerns are high at how many years it will take to test currently unknown cancer causing chemicals (carcinogens) using this method.

It would be inaccurate to state that nothing had ever been found from animal testing – it  provides information on what happens in the animals that have been used. But concern has greatly increased as the vast majority of research is conducted for human purposes and animal studies lack human relevance. This has been shown by much animal research failure over the years, which largely goes unpublished and is subject to bias. This is unacceptable given that billions of animals have suffered in laboratories over many decades. Different species of animals, as well as animals from the same species also provide inconsistent results because just like humans, animals are individuals from physical to microbiological levels.

8) So why does animal research continue?

As animal experiments have been considered the conventional approach for decades, there is an expectation to keep using them, when opportunities for scientists to innovate using more modern and scientifically valid animal-free methods could often be used instead. Therefore, the suggestion that ‘there is no alternative’ is highly misleading (see Q6), because for the majority of animal research there is no legal requirement that scientists use animals, especially in basic or applied research. This is instead driven by demand based on convention and tradition. Furthermore, applications to conduct animal experiments are rarely- if ever – rejected.

It is easier to keep using the old ways even when they don’t work (and when many careers are built on them), rather than try new ideas. As well as the regulatory barriers described above,  there are practical barriers too. For example, when a laboratory is set up with many rodent cages or dog enclosures and everything is geared towards procedures on those animals, it is highly likely to be considered ‘easier’ to keep reordering more animals to fill them than investigate new non-animal models, even when may be more human-relevant. Funding streams for breeding, supply and testing on animals are often closely connected.

This contributes to the ‘lock in’ of attitudes in favour of animal research (see Q6) even when it may be considered unreliable, time consuming and expensive.

Science students are often encouraged to avoid saying that their research ‘didn’t work’, instead to state that ‘more research or repeat procedures are needed’.

It’s also important to remember that despite both the ethical and scientific issues concerning animal research, there is a global and very profitable industry based on the continual breeding, supply and transport of animals to labs, as well as cages, equipment, food and other supplies, so a lot of these businesses want it to continue.

But public opinion to see an end to animal testing remains high. For example a 2024 UK poll on behalf of Animal Aid found that 76% of respondents agree that existing funding should be diverted away from animal experiments to improve the development of animal-free methods. A 2025 poll commissioned by Animal Free Research UK found that 70% of people in Britain support the introduction of a new law that would end animal experiments in medical research by 2035 and include measures to support scientists with the transition to non-animal methods.

9) What are the ‘3Rs’?

Published by two UK scientists, Russell and Burch, back in 1959, the ‘Principles of Humane Experimental Technique’ proposed the concept of the 3Rs of ‘Reduction, Refinement, Replacement’.

Replacement (i.e. entirely animal-free methods) was the ultimate goal of Russell and Burch, with reduction and refinement as steps on the way. Both refinement and reduction still use animals, either in reduced numbers or with ‘refined’ procedures, for example enrichment such as toys, improved bedding or pain relief (unless it interferes with the procedure). As the ‘3Rs’ are widely termed ‘alternatives‘, care must be taken using this term, as essentially two thirds of the 3Rs are still animal tests.

Fast forward over six decades since the 3Rs were published and although there has been progress, the ‘replacement’ that Russell and Burch first proposed is long overdue. While any measures to  refine or reduce animal use must not be overlooked, there is wide opinion that these ‘2Rs’ and arguably the ‘greenwash’ that comes with them have provided a smokescreen to hold back replacement which is now long overdue.

It is replacement which must be the focus to achieve both better science and an end to suffering, for both humans and animals. Lush Prize promotes the ‘1R’ of replacement throughout its work.

10) What are the non-animal methods and how can they replace animals?

The last decade has seen increased recognition and development of modern scientifically-relevant methods to investigate disease and new drugs. For example, in-vitro models, which have advanced from early cell cultures and lab grown human tissue through to ‘3D’ organoids (or ‘mini organs’) and ‘organ-on-a-chip’ technologies (also called microphysiological systems or MPS), which mimic the organs and tissues of the human body in response to drugs or disease development. Alongside human-based in-vitro methods there are advanced computational (in-silico) models, incorporating cutting edge artificial intelligence (A.I.) and the analysis of ‘big data’, which is a concept to describe the vast amounts of existing and newly emerging data, including human-based (clinical) study data. These methods continue to be developed and demonstrate good performance as, unlike animals, they are based on human cells, tissues and data, so are more human-relevant.

It is common to hear (animal) researchers claim that one particular type of non-animal method, e.g. organ-on-a-chip technologies will ‘never replace animals’. This is well known and has never been disputed. In fact, no single animal-free method provides a solution. Instead, non-animal approaches of many different types (incorporating a concept known as ‘weight of evidence’)  must be combined in different ways to answer specific research questions. These new approaches can be used alongside existing and new human (clinical) data which remains vastly underused. Case studies remain vital and are in development to demonstrate this.

It’s also important to note that not all animal tests need ‘replacing’. Many can just be stopped as they are repetitive or redundant. Regulations around the world on animal testing are inconsistent, so even where an animal test is banned in several countries, if one national or regional law still requires it, industry will often conduct it to be able to market their products (e.g. vaccines, drugs, cosmetics) worldwide. Companies may also keep test results secret and avoid sharing results to maintain competitive advantage and ‘intellectual property’, so as a result repeat animal tests may be carried out on the same substance . For example, a recent analysis found extensive repeat testing of the the same chemicals as many as 90 times using the notoriously cruel Draize ‘rabbit eye’ test.

11) Does the EU ban on animal testing for cosmetics mean they’re cruelty-free?

Sadly no. Although the European Union phased in bans on animal testing for cosmetics and the sale of animal tested cosmetics between 2009-2013 under the Cosmetics Regulation, other EU laws on chemical testing override and weaken this regulation, effectively meaning that animal-tested ingredients are still used in cosmetics in the EU and worldwide.

Despite this frustrating loophole, the EU cosmetics bans were a landmark decision as they resulted in the development of non-animal methods in advance of the 2009-2013 deadlines. The bans have also had a positive ‘domino’ effect in other countries beyond the EU who have since introduced similar bans.

But until the loopholes are closed, animals are still suffering for ingredients used in cosmetics and other chemical  ingredients. More detailed information on this can be found in a 2024 Lush Prize report.

There have been some developments towards closing the loopholes. For example, in May 2023 the UK Home Office announced that ‘no new licences will be granted for animal testing of chemicals that are exclusively intended to be used as ingredients in cosmetics products’. This was a welcome announcement but it is in effect only a partial ban relating to approximately 20% (400) chemicals which are only used in cosmetics. Therefore, the ban must be extended to the vast majority of ‘multi-purpose’ ingredients used in cosmetics and other products.

Another important point is that the terms ‘cruelty-free’ and ‘vegan’ are often used together but have different legal definitions. ‘Cruelty-free’ means free of animal testing, ‘vegan’ means free of animal ingredients. Companies know that when they label products, some consumers might assume one of these terms means both. Therefore it’s important to know that a product may be vegan, but not necessarily cruelty-free, and vice versa.

12) Is there positive activity to end animal testing?

Yes, there is some good news. Over the last decade and particularly the last few years, there has been a surge in recognition and development of non animal methods, often termed ‘New Approach Methodologies’ or NAMs. (Note: Lush Prize uses the clear term of ‘non-animal NAMs‘ as the more general ‘NAMs’ term is  considered by some to include animal (in-vivo) studies).

In September 2021, the European Parliament passed a landmark ‘Motion for Resolution on plans and actions to accelerate the transition to innovation without the use of animals in research, regulatory testing and education‘, calling on the European Commission (EC) to take action. As a result, the EC announced a roadmap towards ending animal testing for chemicals. The EC stated it will finalise the roadmap in 2026, but there remains ongoing concern that the pace needs to be accelerated to see the transition and meaningful reductions in animal tests begin now. There are also concerns that in some circumstances, results from non-animal methods will be used to trigger more animal tests.

Another amendment to the US FDA Modernization Act was also passed in 2022, which authorises the use of certain alternatives to animal testing, including cell-based assays and computer models, to obtain an exemption from the Food and Drug Administration to investigate the safety and effectiveness (efficacy) of a drug. The amendment also removed a requirement to use animal studies in certain circumstances and made the legal wording of the Act more flexible towards non-animal methods. This was a landmark result following sustained lobbying by animal protection organisations and other NGOs, who are monitoring progress to see how the amendment will translate into meaningful change for animals and people.

Evidence and case studies are increasing to demonstrate that non-animal methods are the way forward for better protection of public health and the environment, but changing mindsets remains critical.

13) What about veterinary testing? Isn’t that ‘animal research for the benefit of animals’?

There is a misleading impression that veterinary research is ‘animal testing for the benefit of animals’. This is sadly untrue.

Firstly, it is important to state that the vast majority of animal use is for human purposes. Even where animal tests may be categorised or termed ‘veterinary’, much of this testing when examined more closely often involves healthy animals being deliberately infected with disease before being killed, or research ultimately for human benefit and/or profit, for example breeding, racing, food or agriculture. The following are just a few examples:

If the above examples of tests and others like them were stopped, the true number of animal tests which could genuinely be considered for the benefit of non-human animals would be revealed to be much, much lower. There are also a wide number of alternative methods (e.g.simulators and virtual models) which if used more widely, would reduce and replace animal use in veterinary research.

There are further opportunities to avoid animal tests by improved collection and storage of data from animal patients undergoing procedures in veterinary clinics with owners’ consent. This includes compassionate research for the benefit of sick animals. A minority of veterinary researchers do this already and it requires collaboration and scrutiny by national veterinary bodies and ethical review boards to achieve change.

14) What are animal-free models and cell ‘lines’? How are these used and what do they mean?

‘In-vivo’ means a ‘living system’. While this can refer to human in-vivo studies, it is a term nearly always used in reference to animal studies.

‘In-vitro’ studies can also be human- or animal-based, therefore Lush Prize promotes only human in-vitro studies. For example, 3D organoids or organ-on-a-chip models, alongside in-silico (computer)_ models and use of existing and new human data.

Cell lines can also be human- or animal-based. ‘Immortalised’ cell lines can be animal-derived and as they have been reproduced from previous batches of cells, often over years (sometimes referred to as ‘passaging’), technically this means they do not involve the use of ‘new’ animals. It is important to distinguish cell lines from animal-derived ‘primary’ cells or tissues, as this means  the animals have been killed to obtain them, often being subjected to experimental procedures first (e.g. injection, force feeding or deliberate infection or disease).

A method or model can only be considered truly animal-free if it contains no animal-derived materials at all. This includes not only the cells or tissues, but other materials, such as foetal calf serum (FCS – see Q5) or S9 liver fraction (derived from rats) or collagen. Other human-based alternatives are becoming available (for example, see the FCS-Free Database).

For more information related to the above FAQs, contact info@lushprize.org

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Last updated: January 2025