Animal experiments are unethical, unreliable, costly and slow

The European Union should be leading the way in ending the use of cruel and outdated animal testing to replace it with modern, humane and human-relevant science.

In the plenary week of September 13^th 2021, Members of the European Parliament have a unique opportunity to accelerate this transition by instructing Europe’s officials to draw up a bold, ambitious action plan for bringing animal testing to an end once and for all.

Recently published statistics showed that in 2018, the total number of uses of animals in experiments in EU member states (including the UK) was over 10.6 million – a welcome but paltry fall of just 2% compared to 2017.

Six examples that show animal testing doesn’t work 

1. Drug development is in crisis. Currently 90% of drugs fail in clinical trials despite the prior conduct of extensive animal tests suggesting that these medicines were safe and effective.
2. This general failure rate is bad enough, but for drugs aimed at treating complex and poorly understood conditions, failure is almost a certainty. For example, the failure rate for Alzheimer’s drugs is estimated to be higher than 99%.
3. A review of 101 high impact basic science discoveries based on animal experiments found that only 5% resulted in approved treatments within 20 years.
4. Out of 48 cancer drugs approved by the European Medicines Agency from 2009 to 2013, almost half showed no survival benefits. Even in cases where benefits were seen, the difference was judged to be ‘clinically insignificant’.
5. Of over 1,000 potential stroke treatments that had been ‘successful’ in animal tests, only about 10% progressed to human trials. None worked sufficiently well in humans.
6. Aspirin is toxic to many animals, including cats, mice and rats and would not be on our pharmacy shelves if it had been tested according to current animal testing standards.

What you can do to support the call

• Sign our European Citizens’ Initiative to commit to a Europe without animal testing.
• Write to your local MEPs to urge them to vote to accelerate an end to animal testing in the September session.
• Subscribe to our Cruelty Free Europe regular newsletter for more information on our work.