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WDAIL 25

World Day for Animals in Laboratories 2025

Will you donate to help end animal testing and create a cruelty-free world?

GIVE A GIFT FOR ANIMALS

We estimate that the top 10 users of animals in the world are*: 

China – 20.5 million South Korea – 3.1 million 

Japan – 15.0 million United Kingdom – 2.6 million 

U.S.A. – 15.6 million Brazil – 2.2 million 

Canada – 3.6 million Germany – 2 million 

Australia – 3.2 million France – 1.9 million 

(*2015 figures, the most recent year for which global numbers have been calculated).

Click here to read more about facts and figures worldwide.

What is animal testing – and why does it happen? 

Animal testing touches all of our lives through the manufacture of many everyday items, from cosmetics and household products to clothes, furniture, plastics, electronic and white goods, paints, dyes, and food ingredients. 

Established toxicity tests, which aim to ensure the safety of chemicals, involve poisoning guinea pigs, rabbits, rats and mice.

Animals are force fed, forced to inhale or injected with chemicals to see what dose will sicken or kill them.

Those who survive are killed at the end of the experiment and their bodies dissected. These tests are slow, costly, inhumane and generate results that do not provide what we really need to protect human and ecological health into the future. 

Read more about animal testing here

In the EU

1.2 million animals could be saved from suffering in laboratories if, in ten procedures, the non-animal test was used instead. 

In the UK

80,000 animals could be saved by the adoption of six non-animal testing methods. 

Our RAT Lists:

Replacing Animal Tests. Read more on our EU RAT List and UK RAT List pages. 

World Day for Animals in Laboratories is an opportunity to take action on behalf of the millions of animals worldwide who are suffering and dying in cruel experiments.

World Day for Animals in Laboratories, not only reminds us of the sad reality that the lives of innocent animals are threat or at risk, but it is also an urgent call to action: we must work together to save animals from cruelty. 

Every single day, on a global scale, animals are trapped in laboratories, subjected to painful, terrifying and often avoidable experiments—and it’s happening closer to home than you might think. 

We have estimated that at least 192 million animals are used for scientific purposes worldwide every year. This is based on figures for 2015 as the most reliable to date. 

 

MAKE A DONATION TODAY TO PUT AN END TO THIS CRUELTY

How your gift helps

£10

Could help us campaign for legislative change to protect animals

£20

Could help us carry out research into alternatives to show legislators the necessity of ending animal testing

£50

Could help us raise public awareness to put pressure on legislators and governments to support cruelty-free policies

How your voice can help create a cruelty-free world.  

If you’re in the UK… email your MP to encourage them to ask the Minister for Science, Innovation and Technology, Lord Vallance, to publish details of the government’s plans to phase-out animal testing. 

If you’re in the U.S.A.… write to your Representative asking them to co-sponsor two bills which we are supporting:  

  • Humane and Existing Alternatives in Research and Testing Sciences (HEARTS) Act, which encourages the use  

  • and development of humane and effective alternatives to animals in experiments funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH); 

  • Humane Cosmetics Act, to end the use of animal testing for cosmetics in the U.S. and prohibit the sale of any cosmetic product that has been newly tested on animals.