Learn about how and why animals are used for science in New Zealand

In New Zealand, animal use for science is broadly sorted into three categories, known as “RTT”:¹

Research: Animals are used as models in any form of biological research to study disease, injury, development, psychology, environment, anatomy and physiology.  

This can be directed at:

• Species conservation (not always involving the actual protected species it is aimed at)

• Environmental Management (including the control of animal pests and research into methods of reducing production of greenhouse gases)

• Animal Husbandry (including reproduction, nutrition, growth and production)

• Basic Biological Research (any research aimed to understand the workings of living things)

• Medical Research (any research aimed at health and welfare of humans; this is where animals are used to try and model human conditions)

• Veterinary Research (any research aimed at health and welfare of animals, but animals also can be used to try and model other animals)

‍Testing: Animals are used for public health testing or to ensure the safety, efficacy or quality of products, in order to meet the regulatory requirements.

Teaching: Animals are used in dissections, demonstrations and other teaching exercises. This includes school, universities and other teaching institutions, but would also cover any in-house teaching of staff.

‍Types of Animals used for Science

Any species of animal can be used for science, given the approval of an Animal Ethics Committee. The exception are primates (Gorillas, Chimpanzees, Bonobos, Orangutans). Their use is mostly banned in New Zealand, unless the proposed use meets very specific requirements (we have not come across primate use in Aotearoa since that ban).²

Cattle, sheep, fish and mice are the most commonly used animals for RTT in New Zealand. In fact, cattle have been one of the top three used animals since 1989.¹

By law, institutions using animals for science in Aotearoa must return annual statistical forms to the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI). These include all species covered by the Animal Welfare Act.

The Animal Welfare Act does not cover insects and other invertebrates. While we sometimes can find publications where these animals have been used, those experiments do not have to be reported on and require no ethical approval. Therefore, we have no way of knowing how many are used and how.

You can find all the numbers used on our statistics page here.

Types of Institutions that use Animals

Over 100 institutes across Aotearoa use animals for science - the exact number changes yearly as new institutions apply for a code to use animals and others may stop.

These institutes include:

• Universities

• Polytechnics and Institutes of Technology

• Schools

• Commercial organisations (businesses that sell goods or services for the purpose of making a profit)

• Crown Research Institutes (Crown-owned companies that carry out scientific research)³

• Government departments (like the Department of Conservation or the Ministry for Primary Industries)

• Other (non-university medical research institutes, zoos/wildlife parks and individuals)

Not all of them have their own Animal Ethics Committee. Many have an arrangement to use the committee or a bigger institution, abiding by their Code of Ethical Conduct. These are listed as “parented by another institution”.

The map below shows where the 100+ institutes in NZ that can use animals for science are located.

*Important info about this map

The map contains the physical locations of the NZ institutes that were able to use animals for research, testing and teaching purposes in 2021.

The institutes in this map include:

• Institutions with a code of ethical conduct (CEC) approved by the Director-General of MPI.
• Institutes engaging in research, testing and teaching involving animals that had an arrangement to use another institution’s CEC and animal ethics committee rather than forming their own.

We could not find the physical address for the several institutes, and chose to not just display a PO Box location.

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Types of Animal Experimentation

We touched on it above, but to say it again: Over half of all animals used for science in Aotearoa are farm animals.¹ Most people know that animals are exploited for their milk, their skin and most other parts of their bodies but are unaware of the extra layer of exploitation, a hidden layer of suffering in experiments driven by the animal agriculture industry.

The most commonly used animals are cattle, with approximately 100,000 of these animals being used each year. Thousands of cattle are used in Aotearoa every year in research aimed at trying to make more money for the animal agriculture industry.  

Feeding trials often involve fistulation, where the animal is surgically fitted with a plug in their flank that opens to one of the stomachs for easy sampling.

It’s not just cattle who are used in research relating to animal agriculture; it’s all animals who are exploited by this industry: deer, goats, pigs, sheep, chickens, fish, and even mice and rats are used in research relating to animal agriculture.

Research relating to medical, veterinary or basic biology topics involves several groups of animals treated in different ways, with different medicines or being exposed to different environments to then compare the outcomes. These studies often involve surgeries (with or without pain relief), injections of some kind, and more or less regular sampling (be that blood, tissue or repeated tests of a certain behaviour). Especially rodents are most often confined to individual cages to make identification easier and avoid cross contamination of any sort. In the end, wild animals are often released, while the common “lab animals” like mice and rats are likely killed, either for tissue samples or simply because they are of no use anymore.

Any research involving protected species is notably more gentle and cautious of the potential harm to the animal, and more likely to use remote methods like collecting droppings or monitoring via drones.

Unless, of course, the study targets unwanted species, where often toxic bait is involved, and the process of the animal dying is investigated. There are many invasive research methods used in Aotearoa to try and deal with the problem we created by bringing these species here, including:

• Feeding poison to animals, including wallabies, rats, mice, possums, stoats, cats, and dogs.
• Poisoning possums to then feed them to cats, dogs and chickens.
• Trapping animals with wire cages or leg traps, where it is deemed acceptable to only check them once in 16 hours.
• And more!

For more details around Unwanted Species Research, we have created separate resource for you [HERE].

As one example, ten stoats were put into a water-filled flume with a continuous current flowing through it; the aim was to find out how far stoats can swim (i.e., can they swim to remote islands where native and endangered birds live?). One of the stoats swam for nearly two hours – an incredibly long time for an animal to be treading water! One stoat panicked and had to be removed from the water after a few minutes.⁴

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Uses for teaching can involve dissections, practice bodies for human or veterinary surgery, training of animal handling and restraint, behaviour studies in school or higher education and animal-assisted therapy. [link to Animals Used for Teaching]

Another dark aspect of animal use for science is the field of xenotransplantation, where tissues or organs of animals are transplanted into humans. We have more information about it here.

You can find examples of experiments that happened in Aotearoa, New Zealand, sorted by species in our case studies here. We are working on covering all species used for science.

Sources of Animals used for Science

Animals used for science can be sourced in several ways:

• Breeding units: institutional units dedicated to breeding animals for experimentation

• Commercial sources: commercial suppliers of animals (they do not necessarily only breed for use in science)

• Farms: animals obtained from a farm (the farm may be a commercial unit or belong to the institution)

• Born during projects: offspring whose birth is part of the project, e.g. lambing or hatching studies

• Captured: any animals captured in the wild (including feral cats, for example)

• Imported: animals imported into New Zealand from an overseas source (often used to acquire breeds with specific traits)

• Public sources: animals obtained from a pound, a pet shop or other public sources, and privately owned pets who are ‘borrowed’ for the duration of the exercise

In addition to animals used from any of these sources, many animals bred for science end up not being used and are often just killed. The annual statistics gather these data (have been since 2019) for breeding units. Therefore we know that sadly, the number of rats and mice bred, not used and then killed in the name of science is generally higher than the number used in experiments.

You can find more details around animal use statistics on our statistics page here.

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