UK Government U Turn On Using Pets In Lab Experiments

Hi, Although this hasn’t received much publicity, I wanted to let your readers know that the UK Government has done a U turn on proposals to allow stray cats and dogs to be used, under some circumstances, in UK lab experiments. It seems unthinkable. We’ve British after all. However plans were afoot to have the UK fall into line with European legislation.

So what happended? Well the BUAV ran a barn storming campaign against this nonsense and some MPS put together an Early Day Motion (EDM) in the House of Commons basically allowing us to opt out. After all, we have opt out of giving prisoners voting rights, surely we can do this. I asked my MP to sign EDM 193 and she did. Many other people wrote to their MP too. Some declined but the Government has now done a U turn in the face of public pressure. I still don’t know why this didn’t get the media attention it deserves. Here’s the scoop from BUAV:

The BUAV is delighted to report the latest development regarding our campaign to prevent the use of stray cats and dogs being used in experiments. Initially, the UK Government planned simply to adopt the new European legislat…ion text, which allows testing on stray cats and dogs under some circumstances. Under pressure from the BUAV, they revised their statement to say that they “could not currently envisage” allowing tests on stray cats and dogs.

In the face of the BUAV’s ongoing campaign, the Government has now offered to strengthen this position and make it an official policy. We welcome this concession and are very grateful to all our supporters whose efforts have produced this change of position. We urge the Government to proceed with a policy statement announcing in the strongest possible terms that it is a permanent British policy not to allow testing on stray animals.

See earlier post on the subject: http://cat-chitchat.pictures-of-cats.org/2012/05/animal-testing-and-european-directive.html