A national petition calling for the Animal Welfare Act to extend to cover laboratory animals, is nearing 100,000 signatures. This means that the petition is soon to reach the threshold at which is could be debated in the House.
The campaign was established by famous faces & ardent animal advocates, Peter Egan and Ricky Gervais, in response to harrowing footage showing the inhumane treatment of Beagle’s at an animal testing laboratory.
Currently, the Animal Welfare Act 2006 aims to avert any ‘unnecessary suffering’ of protected animals. However, this protection does not extend to animals used for scientific or educational purposes. The RSPCA estimates that in excess of 100 million animals are used for testing across the world every year.
