Campaigners and scientists clash over animal testing at European Parliament

The case for banning animal testing was put to the European Parliament on Monday, with Stop Vivisection, the Italian group responsible for a petition that has attracted over a million signatures in 26 EU countries, arguing that animal testing is both scientifically flawed and ethically wrong.

It has also hindered development of alternative testing methods such as computer modelling and cell culture experiments, the group said.

“Animal models play a minimum if any role at all in predicting the toxicity or effectiveness of new drugs,” said Ray Greek, president of another  advocacy group Americans for Medical Advancement.

But for Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, a French virologist who won the Nobel Prize in 2008 for her part in the discovery of HIV, every animal experiment generates new scientific knowledge which helps human and animal health. “Do you really think we didn’t learn anything from animal testing?” she asked. New treatments for Ebola require studies in monkeys before they are used in humans, she pointed out.

An attempt to ban animal testing, which is a regulatory requirement for new drugs, would see researchers and companies moving their operations elsewhere, to countries where both animal welfare standards and research quality is lower, many members of the European Parliament argued.

The vast majority of animal experiments, roughly 95 percent, involve rodents bred for research.

Current legislation promotes the 3Rs - replace, refine and reduce - the use of animals in experiments. Karl Falkenberg, director-general in the European Commission’s environment directorate said, “I would argue the EU is well ahead of any state in this planet. I don’t know any other legislation that so clearly takes to the defence of animals.”

While Stop Vivisection gathered over one million signatures, Europe-wide opinion on animal testing is not regularly tested. However, 84 per cent of respondents in a 2009 poll carried out by YouGov in Germany, France, Czech Republic, UK, Italy and Sweden said that all testing that causes pain or suffering to animals should be stopped.  

The Commission has until 3 June to issue a formal reply to Stop Vivisection, and outline whether it will move forward with legislation to ban animal testing completely.

The hunt for substitutes: too tame

In letter published last week in The Times and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a group of Nobel Laureates, including Barré-Sinoussi said, “We do not wish for animals to be involved in research forever, and the research community is committed to finding alternative models. However, we are not there yet.”

Alternatives, including testing drugs on cells in vitro or computer modelling of the relationship between dose and effect, are advancing but are not yet ready to replace animal testing. In France, 80 per cent of researchers first conduct non-animal tests, said Barré-Sinoussi. After that, animals are used to validate any findings.

Some grant money is available in Europe to fund the development of alternative testing models, but researchers claim this is inadequate. “Governments are doing really badly on this,” said Katy Taylor, head of science in the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV). “The UK spent €11 million in 2013, which is peanuts really,” she said. In the same year Germany spent around €5 million, Denmark around €400,000 and Finland €100,000.

Barré-Sinoussi said she would like to see the EU’s €79 billion Horizon 2020 research budget put more money aside for hunting substitutes. 

Companies including Dow, DuPont, ExxonMobil, Johnson & Johnson, L’Oréal, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever are also making a noise about more research in this area. A joint statement signed in 2013 calls for ring-fencing at least €325 million of Horizon 2020 money.

Major science groups oppose the Stop Vivisection campaign. “The use of animals in research has facilitated major breakthroughs in medicine which have transformed human and animal health,” they say, in a joint statement with 122 signatories drawn from European universities, charities and drug companies. The potential benefits to health of animal experiments are “compelling”, the letter adds.

“I think it’s unlikely that laws will be removed or altered, sadly,” said Taylor. Even if there is no pruning to legislation, Taylor said she would like to see a political promise made in Brussels to drive down the number of animals tested.

Not that this is would be any guarantee of future action. An agreement between the now-deceased Conservative-Liberal Democrats coalition government back in 2010 to reduce animal testing had little effect work. In the UK, for example, animal testing has gone up, with 4.12 million scientific procedures using animals in 2013, a rise of 0.3 per cent on the previous year. 

The BUAV also wants the European Commission to speed up adoption of alternative methods. When the European Union Reference Laboratory for alternatives to animal testing (ECVAM) validates a new method, it still takes years to filter into legislation, said Taylor.

Move to greater transparency

The Stop Vivisection petition is the latest in a history of clashes between researchers and animal protection groups.

Recently there have been efforts by research organisations to become more open about their research. In the UK 90 institutes are signatories to a pledge, the Concordat on Openness in Animal Research, to be transparent about the nature of their experiments.

Scientists can face intimidation from animal rights campaigners. Hate mail poured into the Max Planck Institute in Germany last month after footage circulated showing experiments on rhesus monkeys involving electrode probes implanted in their brains.

Facing allegations that he was presiding over animal maltreatment, Nikos Logothetis, the head of the Institute's biological cybernetics facility, announced he would only experiment on rodents in the future, citing stress and a lack of support from the science community. Max Planck and other organisations should pursue criminal charges against the small group of activists who target researchers, he said.

Note: This piece was updated on 15.05.2015. The original edition mistakenly cited opinion poll data from 2011, when it was in fact 2009.