Animal defenders descend on Whitehall to demand end of ‘Bloody Cruel’ experiments

To mark World Day for Animals in Laboratories on 24 April, two PETA “pigs” turned up near the UK parliament. Covered in “bloody wounds”, they were slumped over a giant biological waste bin. It read “Keir: Experiments on Animals Are Bloody Cruel. Bin them!” and had “entrails” and “clinical waste” overflowing out of it. Meanwhile a “dog” wearing “forced inhalation apparatus” lay dumped in front of it.

The action follows the release of new footage from inside UK laboratories. This shows animals suffering in experiments that go on every day. They include pigs with test substances being applied to deliberately inflicted wounds, and dogs forced to inhale toxic substances.

PETA’s senior campaigns manager Kate Werner says:

Subjecting millions of mice, dogs, monkeys, and other animals to cruel and unreliable experiments that do nothing to advance human health is totally senseless. The government must expedite its commitment to end costly and defunct experiments on animals, and PETA is calling for an immediate switch to humane, state-of-the-art methods that actually save human lives.

In 2024, more than 2.6 million procedures were carried out on animals. The majority of these were ‘basic’ or curiosity-driven research rather than being required by law. The animals were bled, poisoned, starved, isolated, mutilated, or otherwise subjected to psychological suffering and physical pain in British laboratories. Millions more were bred and discarded as “surplus” because, for example, they were not of the desired sex or lacked certain disease characteristics.

The majority of “highly promising” basic science discoveries are based on animal experiments, yet more than 90% of these fail to lead to treatment for humans.

Featured image via PETA