Ending lab ordeals of animals is about building a world where science does better by all of us

Anyone who knows me knows that animals are at the heart of my life - and indeed my home, with a growing menagerie that includes dogs, cats, horses, sheep, hens, ducks and an angry goose.

- BY DEBORAH MEADEN

More than half of people in Britain have at least one pet and I'm not surprised. Animals can give us so much comfort, joy and companionship. So, if they do that for us, isn't it only right that we do our very best for them?

I was so shocked to hear that more than 2.6 million animals were used in experiments in British laboratories in 2023, including for medical research, testing and the breeding of genetically modified animals.

I feel like many would be as taken aback by this as I was - if they knew. But here's the really shocking part: all that suffering doesn't help people in the way it's supposed to.

When medicines that have been tested on animals move to human trials, 92% of them fail. Imagine that.

Millions of animals every year spend their short lives enduring invasive and painful experiments in unfamiliar laboratories, and yet the results still don't give us answers that can help humans.