Tell your candidates how important it is to end animal testing in the UK
We are asking all Parliamentary Candidates to support our calls for the next government to create a roadmap for the total phase-out of animal testing in the UK – and you can help by emailing all candidates in your constituency to let them know how important the issue is to you.
Using our simple template, you can ask your candidates to:
- Commit to putting the 1998 ban on testing cosmetics on animals, covering ingredients used both predominantly and exclusively in cosmetics, into law;
- Make our homes safer by modernising the system for testing the chemicals that go into the products we use every day, such as food, clothes, household cleaning, furniture, electronic goods, paints and dyes, and removing animals from those tests; and
- Ask that the government create a plan to phase-out animal testing forever, with a minister dedicated to delivering this target across all government departments.
Our ‘Pledge Cruelty-Free’ campaign is a direct response to the government’s decision, revealed in May 2023, to secretly abandon the UK’s 1998 ban on animal testing for cosmetics. This information came to light as part of our legal challenge to the Home Office on the UK’s policy on animal testing. Since this revelation, and following huge public reaction, the government has partially reinstated the cosmetics testing ban, to include ingredients used exclusively in cosmetics but, as this only covers approximately 20% of the total ingredients used in cosmetics, that is not enough.
Home Office statistics show that there were over 2.76 million uses of animals in laboratories in Great Britain in 2022.[3] 10% of those are tests required by regulators to assess the safety or effectiveness of chemicals, medicines and other products.
Yet, despite tests which are designed to keep us safe, the pharmaceutical industry is in a silent crisis: 92% of drugs fail in clinical trials even though they passed extensive pre-clinical tests (including animal tests) which suggested that they were safe and effective.
Dylan Underhill, Head of Public Affairs, Cruelty Free International, said: “The UK stands at a crossroads in its approach to animal testing. We know that, as a country, we can do so much better in our protection of the millions of animals that suffer and die in laboratories every year.
“Now, as we prepare for the General Election, we need all candidates to know the strength of feeling that there is amongst the electorate on this issue, so that the next government will make the right choices for the benefit of the people of the UK, and the animals we all care so much about.
“Animal testing touches our lives in many ways that most of us don’t appreciate, from cosmetics and household products to clothes, furniture, plastics, electronic and white goods, paints, dyes, and food - all of these things can be associated with animal testing on their way to our homes. To stop millions of animals being used in needless and painful tests every year, we need progress and compassion, not the same old status quo. The government must do more to promote alternatives and end the cruel use of animals in science, especially when modern innovations in non-animal methods can produce better results, potentially saving lives and resources.”