Thomas Schröder, President of the German Animal Welfare Association, comments on the numbers of laboratory animals published today by the German Center for the Protection of Laboratory Animals (Bf3R):
“There are still 3,501,693 too many animals being used and killed in the name of science. The majority of these had to be used purely for basic research, without any concrete or foreseeable benefit from the results of the experiments. A total of 50,741 animals suffered the highest degree of pain, suffering or harm in the experiments. One example of this is death by suffocation following the injection of toxic substances. The fact that 1,373,173 so-called surplus animals were bred for scientific purposes but ultimately killed as surplus remains alarming.
The reduction in the number of laboratory animals is a first step in the right direction. A swift decision on the planned reduction strategy is now all the more important so that the numbers can fall sustainably through effective and concrete measures. However, reducing the numbers is not enough; a strategy for phasing out animal experiments is needed. This must be the next step in the transition to animal-free science. The decisive factor here will be to restructure the allocation of funding in order to give top priority to the further development of animal-free methods.”
NUMBERS OF ANIMALS USED IN EXPERIMENTS IN THE FEDERAL STATES: BAVARIA, NORTH RHINE-WESTPHALIA AND BADEN-WÜRTTEMBERG LEAD THE WAY
If you add up all the animals used in animal experiments or killed for scientific purposes in 2023, for example to examine their organs, Bavaria has the largest number of animals at 405,848, followed by North Rhine-Westphalia (394,108 animals) and Baden-Württemberg (324,173 animals). In North Rhine-Westphalia alone, 1,367 Java monkeys were “consumed”.
The highest number of animals that were killed as “surplus” was in North Rhine-Westphalia with 252,405 animals. Bavaria and Berlin follow in second and third place with 239,533 and 205,292 animals respectively. The “surplus animals” are animals that are bred for scientific purposes but are ultimately not needed - and are therefore often “disposed of” for purely economic reasons.
Note to editors: On request, we will be happy to send you an overview of the numbers of laboratory animals in the individual federal states, including the animal species concerned, the purposes for which they are used and the figures for previous years.
