The worst unis for animal testing revealed

Universities across the UK killed over 1.5 million animals in a year in the name of science.

Freedom of Information responses submitted to Cruelty Free International show the extent of medical testing and which unis were the worst in 2014.

Oxford were the worst offenders killing 226,739 animals including 209,686 mice. Edinburgh came in at number two killing 200,861 animals, which included 30,795 fish. UCL, King’s and Cambridge made up the top five killing 176,901, 165,068 and 160,557 respectively.

The five worst universities: Oxford, Edinburgh, UCL, King’s and Cambridge, account for the deaths of 930, 126 animals. According to the Home Office, university animal testing makes up 50 per cent of all experiments on animals in the UK.

Exeter may only have ranked as the 16th worst university, yet they registered an unprecedented 290 per cent increase on their previously released figures. On the other end of the spectrum, Lancaster ranked as the 52nd worst uni with a decrease of 76 per cent.

A variety of animals were experimented on including monkeys, rabbits, sheep, guinea pigs, ferrets, fish, birds, frogs, rats and mice. Examples of experiments carried out include depriving monkeys of food and water, implanting electrodes into their skulls, or trapping them inside plastic boxes while blasting them with loud noises.

Other harrowing examples include injecting rats with acid to cause brain damage, sheep having their ovaries punctured during surgery and guinea pigs having their eyelids sewn open before stretching their optic nerve to 130 per cent its original length.

Not all universities are included in the data as Manchester and Southampton didn’t respond to the request, and Imperial and Bristol claimed their figures weren’t held centrally.

Dr. Katy Taylor, Director of Science at Cruelty Free International said: “We urge [universities] to leave this archaic practice behind and move towards developing innovative and humane research methods for the 21^st century.”

[infogram id=”animal_testing-21″]