No Cardiff University, exploiting 52,011 animals in a year is not ‘humane’

With people like Donald Trump in the world, we shouldn’t still be testing on bunny rabbits


Last week, a freedom of information request conducted by The Tab revealed that 52,011 animals were used for Cardiff University’s scientific research last year.

I already knew that Cardiff Uni were notorious for being bad in this department, as I’ve been handed about five thousand leaflets by campaigners outside the Students’ Union. However, the shocking numbers in the report left me baffled, upset and frankly confused.

Here are the facts. The exploitation of innocent animals in experiments is not only cruel but is also often ineffective. Animals don’t naturally develop diseases that we people do, such as major types of heart disease, several types of cancer, HIV, Parkinson’s, or many mental health issues like schizophrenia. Therefore, artificially inducing such diseases into animals in laboratories, attempting to mimic the human conditions is ethically questionable. In many cases, such experiments actually belittle the complex nature of human diseases, which are affected by hundreds of variables including genetics, socio-economic factors, deeply-rooted psychological issues and individual personal experiences.

How can treatments that work on mice and rats be guaranteed to work on human beings? They absolutely can not. Cardiff University and thousands of other organisations have been partaking in animal testing over many decades, yet we still haven’t found absolute, concrete cures for diabetes, strokes or Alzheimer’s disease.

One response to the report argued that the animals are bred for a specific purpose which is carried out and then the animals are killed humanely with the least amount of pain possible. To me, this is utter madness.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the university stated: “A procedure must be regulated if it is to be carried out on a protected animal, for scientific purposes and has the possibility of causing pain, suffering distress or lasting harm.

“Some animals are used more than once (under licence authority). Most animals are killed at the end of an authorised series of procedures in accordance with the legal conditions of the relevant project licences and this is done via a humane method.”

“Most animals are killed” at the end of the process ultimately means these animals are born, exploited and then killed in an environment that is entirely unnatural to them. Their quality of life is poor, they are forced to endure a life of sickness, pain and suffering. Humane? Load of bollocks.

If we can send man to the moon, we can find something else to test our medicine on.