Whilst vaccines help safeguard the health and welfare of many animals, this is achieved at a considerable cost to other animals used to assess the safety and effectiveness of these vaccines.
The RSPCA believes more can and should be done to develop tests that will replace or avoid the use of animals, substantially reduce the level of suffering and reduce the numbers of animals used.
Although some advances have been made, a lack of published data on the numbers of animals used and levels of suffering in the different types of test make progress difficult to assess.
In 2005 the Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) released statistics relating to the number of animals used in tests for batch release in the UK during 2003, but no further data were made available for the years 2004, 2005 or 2006. Following a statement by Defra in 2007, information relating to tests during 2007 has since been released and it is hoped that data for the years 2008 and 2009 will be made available in due course.
For more information, read the ' veterinary vaccines' animal welfare indicator.
