Print the pageDogs and Regulatory Testing
Dogs are widely used in biomedical research, testing, and education. Most animals are used in the development of human or veterinary medicines and many experiments are highly invasive or cause pain and distress to the animals involved. 
Home Office statistics indicate that 7,464 procedures were conducted on dogs in 2007. This involved using 5,648 dogs, mainly beagles.
The latest year for which EU statistics are available is 2002. In that year 12,826 dogs were used by EU member states for safety, toxicity and research and development purposes. 79 per cent of all dogs were used within the UK, France and Germany.
In 2002, a staggering 68,220 dogs were used in the United States.
Experiments are often conducted on dogs to satisfy or pre-empt testing requirements of regulatory bodies. In some ways, dogs have become the default non-rodent second species for medicines testing.
FRAME's interests
FRAME, the RSPCA and a number of major drug companies have been working together to establish new practices that improve the treatment of dogs used in experiments. They have set internal standards and limits for the length of dog experiments.
A second aspect of this project involves sharing data for control animals and animals that are used to test the effects of the vehicle (or excipient), a new drug is adminstered in ...... In some cases, the number of dogs used per study have, as a result almost halved.
Smith, D., Combes, R., Depelchin, O., Jacobsen, S.D., Hack, R., Luftf, J., Lammens, L., von Landenberg, F., Phillip, B., Pfister, R., Rabemampianina, E., Sparrow, S., Stark, C., Stephan-Gueldner, M. (2005). Optimising the design of preliminary toxicity studies for pharmaceutical safety testing in the dog. Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology 41, 95–101.