Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the publication of Statistics of Scientific Procedures on Living Animals, Great Britain 2013, what assessment she has made of the reasons for the increase in the number of guinea pigs used in scientific procedures; and how many of those guinea pigs were used by DSTL Porton Down.

The increase in the number of guinea pigs used in scientific procedures during
2013 is largely due to a change from tissue (mainly blood) collection
post-mortem to collecting it ante-mortem. Collecting tissues post mortem is not
a regulated procedure and therefore is not reported in the statistics.

In real terms, the number of guinea pigs needed for the collection of a
specified volume of blood is fewer by the ante-mortem method than by the post-
mortem method previously used. The blood collection is carried out on
terminally anaesthetised guinea pigs, such that there is no actual additional
suffering for the individual animals, compared with the post mortem method.
Guinea pig blood and its components are used widely in biomedical research as
reagents for non-animal research methods.

The number of guinea pigs used by DSTL Porton Down cannot be given as Section
24 of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 prevents the Home Office
from releasing statistics for individual establishments. It is a decision for
the Ministry of Defence to decide what information to release in regards to
animals used under their individual certificates.