Toxicity testing

The footage is the first of its kind to be recorded inside UK laboratories for over a decade. If you cannot watch, here are just some of the tests witnessed:

• Young beagles tethered and fitted with masks, forcing them to inhale test chemicals.
• Dogs, rats, monkeys, rabbits and pigs having a plastic feeding tube forced down their throats (this process is known as ‘oral gavaging’) administering test substances directly into their stomachs. 
• Beagles with catheters surgically implanted. The dogs are then forced to wear jackets, to which a pump is attached. The pump constantly pumps a test substance directly into their blood stream. 
• Monkeys trapped in ‘primate chairs’ while sealed masks are fitted to their faces, forcing them to inhale test chemicals. 
• Pregnant rabbits confined to plastic containers while a test substance is injected into their ear vein. These containers are rabbit-shaped and so small that the rabbits cannot move at all. 
• Eight rectangles of skin and flesh were surgically removed from a pig’s back so that a test substance can be applied to their wounds. 
• Rows upon rows of rats, squeezed into narrow tubes and unable to move, fitted to an ‘inhalation tower’ that forces them to breathe in test chemicals . 

The effects of these tests may include – but not limited to – tremors, convulsions, collapse, vomiting, diarrhoea, weight loss, loss of limb co-ordination, bleeding, and even death. 

It is difficult to overstate the gravity of what animals in laboratories endure. Not only do the experiments themselves strip animals of their agency and bodily autonomy, and intentionally inflict harm, but their ‘unseen’ suffering may also include: 

• Isolation and confinement
• Repeated experiments that can last months, even years 
• Physical restraint, either by laboratory workers or because they are confined in jars, containers, tubes, chairs or cages 
• Barren, indoor housing 
• Inadequate or non-existent pain relief (painkillers are only administered if it does not interfere with the experiment) 
• Stress and fear 
• Learned helplessness, a psychological state when an individual, after repeated exposure to uncontrollable, inescapable situations, ‘gives up’ demonstrated by passivity, withdrawal, and low motivation to eat or engage with their environment 

Some animals are confined solely for the purpose of breeding, to produce more animals for future tests or to test the effect of a substance on unborn foetuses.  

Pregnant rabbits, for example, are often used in toxicity tests to look at the effects of a test substance on “embryo-foetal survival and development” – essentially harming mothers to test the effect on their unborn babies, who may die before birth, at birth, or be born with a disability. 

At the end of an experiment, most animals will be killed, their bodies dissected.  

These tests are unreliable. 

As shocking as it might sound, conducting experiments on animals has an incredibly low rate of successfully predicting outcomes in humans. A paper published in 2023 summed this up perfectly, stating “The failure rate for the translation of drugs from animal testing to human treatments remains at over 92%, where it has been for the past few decades”.   

Millions of people have suffered adverse reactions to medications despite them having been ‘safety tested’ on animals. Examples include Vioxx, which was withdrawn from the market after a suspected 88,000-140,000 people suffered serious coronary heart disease, and TGN1412, which caused life threatening organ failure and brain swelling despite it showing no ill effects in monkeys (even at a dose 500 times higher).  

Crucially, even if these tests were reliable, there can be no justification for inflicting such suffering on animals.