FRAME welcomes Home Secretary's announcement

FRAME is pleased that Home Secretary Theresa May is due to announce a ban on animal tests for household products today (July 19) but believes that the pledge should go further than it does. No date has yet been set for such a ban to be introduced. 
 
Household product testing on animals is already in decline according to official figures. The recently released Home Office statistics for animal experiments showed a fall in the number of procedures carried out for toxicology testing. The 2010 total was down 11 per cent to 391,000, compared with 2009. Only 24 were defined specifically as being on household products. Most were defined as industrial or agricultural tests.

Chairman of the FRAME Trustees Professor Michael Balls said: “Out of a total of more than three million scientific procedures carried out on animals in the UK in 2010 this is a very small number. However, we are pleased to hear that the Government is determined to make the change.”

FRAME has advised the UK Government on reducing the number of experiments on animals for many years. It was one of the organisations involved in shaping the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, which introduced the need to justify the use of animals in scientific procedures.  FRAME still comments on proposed legislation and has taken part in the consultation process for EU rules over cosmetics testing and the new Directive on the protection of animals used for scientific and other experimental purposes, which will take effect in 2013.

Archived July 27