Why We Work to End Animal Experimentation

An end to animal experimentation would benefit animals, people and science!

We are working tirelessly to put an end to animal experimentation here in New Zealand. In fact, ending animal experimentation would benefit not only the animals but us as individuals and as a society.

Ending animal experimentation and the harmful use of animals in science helps…

ANIMALS

  • Every year, several thousand animals are enduring extreme pain or discomfort during experiments in Aotearoa. This is reflected in the impact rating within NZ statistics.1
  • Some animals, particularly rats and mice are bred in excess, just to be killed when they are not needed. Often, there are more rats and mice killed as “excess” than used in actual experiments.2
  • A lot of research is conducted for the animal agriculture industry so that animals can be more ‘efficiently’ exploited.
  • Research into non-invasive control of unwanted species (like stoats and possums), takes not only their right not to suffer into consideration, but it can also benefit our native species.

PEOPLE

  • Animal experiments regularly fail to detect if a drug or medicine is going to be toxic to humans, which can sadly result in people being hurt.3
  • We know of many drugs that would have been abandoned before ever reaching human patients if they had been tested on the “wrong” species.4
  • Researchers conducting animal experiments often struggle with their conscience.5
  • Alternative methods of teaching anatomy and physiology are teaching students better and more ethically than animal dissections.6,7
  • Teaching using animal-free methods can encourage children to have compassion for animals.8

SCIENCE

  • Keeping, breeding, and testing on animals is incredibly expensive.9
  • Conducting animal experiments takes a long time.10
  • Results of animal experiments vary, especially between different institutions, and therefore are not easily replicated or generalised.11
  • Animal-free research methods like Organ-on-a-chip enable researchers to observe and measure things that are simply impossible to access using animals.12
  • Animal-free methods are often not only cheaper but more accurate.13

Find out more below!

With your help we can end animal experimentation in Aotearoa.