Animal testing: why the number of procedures is increasing

The total number of animal testing procedures increased in 2011 by 2% on 2010 to just over 3.79 million the Home Office reported today . As you can see from the Home Office chart above, the number of procedures has been increasing year on year since 2001. The data released today also shows that genetic tests, mostly on mice, seem to be a large factor in this change. {"dataSourceUrl":"//docs.google.com/spreadsheet/tq?key=0AonYZs4MzlZbdDRkaXNWaEhvbTE2V1FZVmMxWEdDaVE&transpose=1&headers=1&range=A1%3AS4&gid=14&pub=1","options":{"vAxes":[{"title":"Proceedures (thousands)","useFormatFromData":true,"viewWindowMode":"pretty","viewWindow":{}},{"useFormatFromData":true,"viewWindowMode":"pretty","viewWindow":{}}],"title":"Genetically modified animals testing and total testing compared (1995-2011)","booleanRole":"certainty","curveType":"","animation":{"duration":0},"lineWidth":2,"useFirstColumnAsDomain":true,"hAxis":{"title":"Year","useFormatFromData":true,"minValue":1995,"viewWindowMode":"explicit","viewWindow":{"min":1995,"max":2011},"maxValue":2011},"width":460,"height":276},"state":{},"chartType":"LineChart","chartName":"Chart3"} So what is genetic testing? The organisation Understanding Animal Research explain that genetic tests are often switching off part of the genome to see the effects. As for the value of these tests, the Home Office grant permission to test only in projects where there is demonstrable benefit . In the case of the genetic testing the results are collated in projects like the European Mouse Mutant Archive , and the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium (IMPC) which aim to explain and share the functions of genes in mice. Ideally with the data released today we would like to know, of the different procedures, which are likely to cause suffering to the animals involved. The Home Office published a report classifying a procedure's severity as mild, moderate, substantial and unclassified. Approximately 3% of projects are banded as unclassified, 36% as mild, 59% as moderate, and 2% as substantial. But unfortunately there is not enough information for us to link these severity standards and the data released today in a meaningful way. So what do the figures tell us? There was an increases in numbers of procedures for several species as you can see in this chart: {"dataSourceUrl":"//docs.google.com/spreadsheet/tq?key=0AonYZs4MzlZbdDRkaXNWaEhvbTE2V1FZVmMxWEdDaVE&transpose=1&headers=1&range=A1%3AY13&gid=2&pub=1","options":{"vAxes":[{"useFormatFromData":true,"title":"Number of procedures (thousands)","viewWindowMode":"pretty","viewWindow":{}},{"useFormatFromData":true,"viewWindowMode":"pretty","viewWindow":{}}],"curveType":"","booleanRole":"certainty","title":"Procedures by species 1988-2011","height":276,"animation":{"duration":0},"width":460,"lineWidth":2,"useFirstColumnAsDomain":true,"hAxis":{"useFormatFromData":true,"title":"Year","minValue":1988,"viewWindowMode":"explicit","viewWindow":{"min":1988,"max":2011},"maxValue":2011}},"state":{},"chartType":"LineChart","chartName":"Chart1"} This data shows that over 72,000 more fish were used in procedures last year and over 20,000 more birds. This may be explained by the increased use of zebrafish testing the Understanding Animal Research team suggest. Also the number of cat's tested increased by 25% which represents a total of 48 more cats on 2010 figures. There were falls testing for some species, for example rats down 11% (that's just over 33,000 less than in 2010) and just over 1,000 less dogs than in 2010. The number of procedures by institution is shown below: {"dataSourceUrl":"//docs.google.com/spreadsheet/tq?key=0AonYZs4MzlZbdDRkaXNWaEhvbTE2V1FZVmMxWEdDaVE&transpose=1&headers=1&range=A1%3AY9&gid=5&pub=1","options":{"vAxes":[{"title":"Number of proceedures (thousands)","useFormatFromData":true,"minValue":null,"viewWindowMode":"pretty","viewWindow":{"min":null,"max":null},"maxValue":null},{"useFormatFromData":true,"viewWindowMode":"pretty","viewWindow":{}}],"title":"Proceedures by establishment 1988-2011","booleanRole":"certainty","curveType":"","animation":{"duration":0},"lineWidth":2,"useFirstColumnAsDomain":true,"hAxis":{"title":"Year","useFormatFromData":true,"minValue":1988,"viewWindowMode":"explicit","viewWindow":{"min":1988,"max":2011},"maxValue":2011},"width":460,"height":276},"state":{},"chartType":"LineChart","chartName":"Chart2"} It shows that Universities and medical schools are now the biggest animal testers, overtaking commercial organsiations in 2002. Many thanks to the team at Understanding Animal Research for putting these figures into context. Here's all the data and charts from the ' Scientific Procedures on Living Animals ' report today. Let us know what you think of it in the comments. Download the data • DATA: download the full spreadsheet More data More data journalism and data visualisations from the Guardian World government data • Search the world's government data with our gateway Development and aid data • Search the world's global development data with our gateway Can you do something with this data? • Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group • Contact us at [email protected] • Get the A-Z of data • More at the Datastore directory • Follow us on Twitter • Like us on Facebook