Yesterday the Medical Research Council (MRC) released a press story boasting that ‘animals used in research are provided with the highest standards of care and welfare.’ The ricidulousness of this statement should be plain to anyone with half a brain, but sadly it’s a pervasive myth that animals are treated ‘humanely’ and to high welfare standards.
To have high welfare standards means to look after an animal’s wellbeing. Seriously harming a being is not compatible with wellbeing: it’s simply incoherent to claim that you are providing high welfare standards whilst causing harm. Similarly, to be humane is to show compassion or benevolence: causing severe harm is not compatible with showing compassion or kindness.
The science industry cuts up live animals, it gives them diseases and disabilities, it breeds them with terrible conditions, it inflicts chronic pain, and it makes them suffer physically and psychologically. None of those things are compatible with high welfare and nor are they humane.
The cognitive acrobatics required to believe that seriously harming an animal is compatible with high welfare standards are impressive, but the MRC is kidding itself and lying to us. By all means, argue that the harms are permissible, or that they are necessary (I happen to disagree, but that’s an entirely separate argument), but the lie that animals are treated humanely or with regard to their wellbeing is so absurd a lie that it really ought to stop.
This is the reality of Britain’s ‘high welfare standards’: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jIMDUEEIlII
Steve Cooke 