The 2023 Animals in Science Regulation Unit Report highlights the poor welfare conditions that can be suffered by animals in British labs

In September 2024, the Home Office released the 2023 annual statistics of scientific experiments on animals. This report describes how many experiments were carried out on animals in British laboratories in the previous year.

In 2023, a staggering 2,681,686 experiments were carried out using animals in Britain alone.

These statistics are widely publicised and are often used as a benchmark of how much ‘progress’ has been made in reducing the number of animals used in laboratories each year. However, they don’t tell us about the welfare of the animals or the level of care they receive.

The latest report from the Animals in Science Regulation Unit (ASRU) details the poor conditions and welfare failures experienced by animals in laboratories in 2023 across Britain. In many cases, non-compliance with animal use licence terms led to the increased suffering, and even deaths, of hundreds of animals.

2023 ASRU Report summary

The report makes for distressing and infuriating reading, highlighting the poor welfare conditions that can be suffered by animals used in experiments, whose entire life purpose is sadly, to be used in experimentation. In many cases, the cause of death or suffering endured was a lack of sufficient care and attention, miscommunication, disregard for the terms of the licence or sheer incompetence.

Issues from the report are explained in depth below, but some key points include:

• 169 cases of non-compliance in 2023 (just a 3% decrease from 2022).
• 154,904 animals were involved, including dogs and monkeys—an overwhelming 864% increase from 2022.
  
• 553 animals experienced ‘adverse welfare’ due to non-compliance, many of which died or had to be killed as a result.
• 18 non-compliance cases were due to a failure to provide food and water – many for multiple days resulting in the deaths of several animals.
• 78 cases of non-compliance were related to ‘failure to provide appropriate care’, resulting in the deaths of at least 459 mice, rats and fish.
• Common causes of death included animals getting stuck in equipment or parts of their cages, fish being able to jump out of their tanks as the baffle wasn’t replaced, and neonatal mice drowning in their cages due to malfunction of automatic watering systems.
• Other causes of death included animals being forgotten about in transportation boxes or bags for days, poor water quality, and adverse effects after experiments were not performed correctly.

The unfortunate fate of millions of animals each year is to live their lives in an unnatural laboratory environment, be experimented on, then killed in most cases, so the thought that these animals may not be properly cared for, feeling fear and stress during their short lives is heartbreaking. ASRU has a responsibility to enforce the law of ASPA, with strict repercussions for licence holders who do not adhere to the terms of their licence.

Here’s how you can help

Thanks to Ruth Jones MP, an Early Day Motion (EDM 210) has been tabled in Parliament. This EDM calls for urgent support of Herbie’s Law, a groundbreaking proposal to phase out animal experiments in medical research by 2035.

EDMs are a powerful way for MPs to publicly show their support, build momentum for change, and make animal suffering in laboratories a priority in Parliament. Your MP’s voice matters—but they need to hear from you first.

We’ve made it easy—just click the link below to get started!