Animal Experiments

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Rehman Chishti

Tuesday 5th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) on securing this debate, and on outlining in such depth and detail the case against not animal experimentation per se, but the huge number of unnecessary experiments. He says that we need to get to a situation in which only absolutely essential tests continue. I would very much like one day to see a world in which there was no animal testing, but I accept that, at the moment, we should be lobbying and campaigning for a gradual incremental approach, highlighting the fact that there is so much duplication of unnecessary animal tests and that there are areas in which it is completely unethical to test products on animals.

Cosmetic testing is the one such area in which I think most people would support that kind of lobbying work. Indeed, public opinion polls show that the vast majority are against cosmetic testing on animals, which is one of those things that, if asked, people are very much against, but they struggle as consumers to put that into practice. People like me might spend ages looking at all the labels on everything—the Leaping Bunny logo is useful if people are trying to find a product that has not been tested on animals anywhere through the supply chain—but many others are misled by products such as Herbal Essences. People think that because something has “herbal” or “natural” in its name, all the ingredients must be derived from the plant world with no chemicals. They also extrapolate that those products are humane and not tested on animals, whereas we know that in most cases they are, or at least they are produced by companies that do a lot of animal testing.

It has taken 20 years to get to the stage where the cosmetic testing ban is about to come into force. In 1991, the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection set up the European coalition of leading animal protection organisations with the aim of ending the use of animal testing for cosmetics. We now have the ban on the import and sale of animal-tested cosmetic products and ingredients, which comes into force on 11 March.

I am interested to know how that ban will be enforced—I believe that that is the responsibility of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. I recently asked a question of the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) and was told that her Department is working with trading standards to develop guidance for local authority trading standards services on implementing the ban. My concern is that trading standards has many other things on its plate, that it is not well resourced and that it is affected by cuts, as are many other public sector bodies. Will the Minister tell us whether the guidance has already been published? Will there be consultation? What is the timetable for disseminating that guidance to local authority trading standards, and what training will there be on implementing the guidance? What enforcement action are local authority trading standards likely to take?

There needs to be more proactive testing of cosmetics during the import process, rather than waiting to try to catch people in shops and market stalls who are selling products that are still being tested. We ought to be able to stop those products from coming into the UK in the first place. The BUAV suggests that that could involve an inspector checking documentation to ensure that batches are compliant. Not only would that act as a deterrent to companies that might want to chance their arm, but it would uncover anything before it reached the market. When we consider the way in which the recent horsemeat situation came to light, everyone would agree that we should not find out after the event that something such as horsemeat has entered the food chain; we want to stop it coming into the country in the first place. Will the Minister examine the BUAV’s proposal to ensure that the ban is properly implemented?

The pledge to end testing household products on animals was set out in the coalition agreement in 2010. I remember in the run-up to the 2010 general election there was an event in Parliament at which speakers from the three main political parties pledged their support. Obviously, there is political will to do something, and the Government have said that no project licences will be granted for testing household products on animals.

When I recently tabled a parliamentary question asking for the definition of “household product,” the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice answered:

“There is no authoritative definition of ‘household product’ in UK or European legislation.”

He said that new guidelines will apply to

“‘substances used in the household’”,

and that decisions will be made

“on a case by case basis.”—[Official Report, 22 January 2013; Vol. 557, c. 151W.]

Obviously, substances “used in the household” may cover a wide range of things, and I could imagine getting into a dispute about whether something will be covered by those rules.

As the hon. Member for Crawley said, there is no mention of any restriction on testing the ingredients of household products. As the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice confirmed, Government figures for 2011 show that the number of tests on finished household products was zero. So implementing a ban on the testing of finished products will not achieve anything; it is the ingredients that are important. When the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone), who was then a Minister in the Department, was asked about that in 2011, she said that when the ban is introduced, it will

“apply to both finished household products and their ingredients, although in practice mainly the latter are tested.”—[Official Report, 28 March 2011; Vol. 526, c. 80W.]

I would be grateful if the Minister elaborated on that. Does the ban apply to ingredients, as well as to finished products? If the ban applies only to finished products, how effective will it be? Or is the ban simply an empty gesture?

A new version of some household products seems to hit the market every few months. One moment we are told that a washing powder is the best ever and that it gets everything 100% white—it is marvellous, wonderful and cutting edge, and nothing could be better. Then, three months later, there is suddenly a new, improved version. That constant drive to get market share, to sell a new product and to present it as something different in some ways buys into the need to test more things that go into the product. Perhaps I am a bit old-fashioned, but we have plenty of household products that are capable of washing our clothes and cleaning our floors and windows. We do not need to introduce any new products or ingredients. We certainly do not need to do so at the expense of animals that have to have ingredients tested on them.

I hosted an event in Parliament on 16 January, which the hon. Member for Crawley attended. At that event, the Dr Hadwen Trust announced that it is funding the first professorial post in animal replacement science at Queen Mary, university of London. The post is an academic position, and another researcher will also be funded as part of the unit. They will be working solely on replacements for, and the reduction of, testing on animals. That means that the UK will be at the forefront of efforts to provide alternatives to animal testing. The new professor will be appointed in the next few months and will be based at the Blizard institute. The professor will particularly look at things such as developing in vitro models using human cells and tissue, and developing three-dimensional models in cutaneous gastroenterology and cancer research, which is a welcome move that provides credibility to the field of animal replacement.

People often think that the debate is just scientists against people who care about cuddly animals and have an emotional response, rather than people who are interested in the most effective scientific methods. At the launch, it was interesting that so many research scientists came up to me saying, “We don’t actually think that testing on animals is an effective way of doing it. We don’t think it gets the right results. Mice are genetically not the right animals to test something that we are developing to treat humans.” The professorial post creates credibility for the search for alternatives to testing on animals, which is important.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

I welcome what the hon. Lady is saying. She talked earlier about science and new technology. Does she welcome the fact that, last year, the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research established 15 PhDs to consider alternatives to animal experiments? I think it is great to see both more scientists and more funding.

[Kerry McCarthy]

That is another welcome development. The National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research has done some good work, but more can be done. As we know, the number of animal experiments has gone up, partly because of medical developments, new forms of testing, and so on. I will judge the centre’s success by the reduction in the number of overall animal experiments, rather than success in one area and increased tests elsewhere.