Federal investigation: There are more and more painful animal experiments

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The increase in animal testing reflects the lively research activity, the Federal Office for Food Safety and Veterinary Affairs (BLV) wrote in a statement on Thursday. The long-term average is that the number of attempts is in the lower range.

With 40 fewer research projects involving animals last year, the total of 2,334 projects involving animals was the average of the past ten years. However, the number of animals “used in research projects” increased by two percent in 2022.

In total, researchers used 585,991 animals in experiments last year. In a long-term comparison, the number is in the lower range according to the BLV: according to the 2022 animal testing statistics, between 560,000 and 760,000 animals have been used in experiments annually over the past twenty years.

While fewer and fewer mice were used in animal experiments, the number of fish increased significantly. Compared to the previous year, according to the BLV, around 80,000 animals were used in experiments in 2022, more than twice as many. The increase is due to a high level of research activities in areas such as toxicology, ecology and basic research.

Animal protection organizations see an urgent need for action. The previous approach was not ambitious enough, the organizations Animal Rights Switzerland, Animalfree Research and Tier im Recht (TIR) ​​wrote in a response.

The number of animals in extremely stressful experiments has even increased by five percent compared to the previous year. And although the federal government wants to reduce the number of animal tests, it has remained stable at 500,000 to 600,000 in recent years. The animal protection organizations are therefore calling for an exit plan from stressful animal testing.

(SDA)

Source:Blick