We’ve been busy expanding our animal research statistics on the website. We now have a new main statistics page, from which viewers can then look at pages devoted to the number of animal experiments in different countries (note that “Statistics” in the Facts menu no longer sends readers to the US stats page, though no urls have changed).
On Friday we posted statistics for the Netherlands, today we produce the recently published statistics for Northern Ireland. Whereas England, Scotland and Wales (collectively “Great Britain”) produce one set of statistics together (which tend to be referred to as the “UK Stats”, though this is not technically correct), Northern Ireland produce their own. However, practically, Great Britain accounts for over 99.5% of the UK’s animal experiments, so they are often referred to as the UK stats.
According to the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety in Northern Ireland, in 2013, there were 19,860 procedures on 18,638 animals*. Most of these were on mice, but there was also a significant number of pigs (959), sheep (790), cattle (914), birds (2095), rats (995) and fish (521). No cats, dogs or primates were used in 2013.
*animals are only counted in the total numbers the first time they are involved in research, so an animal which is used in both 2012 and 2013 is only included in the 2012 “number of animals”, but will be included in the “number of procedures” for both 2012 and 2013.
Compared with the previous year, there were 1,193 more animals used, representing a 7% rise from 2012. This was likely due to a rise in the number of chickens (up 1,076).
It should be noted that despite Northern Ireland using 200 times fewer animals than the rest of the UK, is still holds itself to the same high quality of statistical reporting.
Know of any other countries which have reported statistics in 2012 or 2013, then please tell us where to find them!
Speaking of Research 