ANIMAL EXPERIMENTS RISE BY 110,000

New Government figures released today show a startling rise in animal experiments of 110,000 in 2002 compared with 2001.

Norman Baker MP, Liberal Democrat Shadow Environment Secretary, said:

"The rise in animal experiments flies in the face of the government's 1997 commitment to reduce testing on living animals.

"Too little attention has been paid to funding alternatives to experiments, requiring data sharing and eliminating unauthorised experiments."

ENDS

Notes to Editors

1. The Home Office report 'Statistics of Scientific Procedures on Living Animals, Great Britain 2002' states, "the number of scientific procedures started in 2002 was just over 2.73 million, a rise of about 110,000 (4.2 percent) on 2001."