Animal rights group protest Imperial’s receipt of animal research award

Just before the end of last term we ran an article about the fact that Imperial College had been awarded for Public Engagement Activity in the annual ‘Openness on Animal Research Awards’. In response we were contacted by Cruelty Free International and given a press release from the animal rights group.

It’s worth noting here that the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection that published the controversial undercover investigation in April 2013 merged with its sister organization Cruelty Free International in March of last year, taking on their name and branding.

Cruelty Free International have responded to the news of the report but stating that “it is deeply ironic that the College has been given an award for openness – by the main pro-vivisection lobby group – when it recently fought Cruelty Free International tooth and nail not to disclose how many hours care staff are on duty.”

This comes back to the Imperial Animal Research Annual Report from 2014, which Cruelty Free International challenged for the reference to ‘round the clock’ or ‘24/7’ care. The actual quote from the Report states “In addition to world-class facilities, we are also committed to providing round the clock care for all our animals, with at least one veterinarian and five senior animal care staff on call 24/7”, says Mandy Thorpe, Director of Central Biomedical Services (CBS). “We also monitor the animals’ environment night and day, and if conditions fall outside of the Home Office Code of Practice, we will be notified by text and email alerts.”

The Cruelty Free International response to the award continues “We now know – after the College lost our case at the Information Tribunal – that care staff are on duty only from 8am to 5pm, considerably less on weekends and public holidays. This is despite the highly invasive surgical procedures routinely carried out by researchers, such as induced heart attacks and double kidney transplants”. It should be noted that the challenged report states that research staff at Imperial “also have a long-standing practice not to carry out surgery on Fridays, weekends, bank holidays or College closure days.”

So, whilst the Cruelty Free International has indeed established that there are not 24-hour checks, there seems to be no particular fault in this area for College beyond a poorly worded report in 2014.

Certainly, though there’s a strong sentiment that 24 hour care would be the kindest way to treat the animals vital to our research, we don’t seem to have an actual legal requirement to do so.

Perhaps then it would be more effective for efforts of animal rights groups such as Cruelty Free International, to focus on lobbying the Home Office to update its legislation so all Animal Research Institutes have to follow better guidelines.