Experiments on animals soar

Animal testing in Britain has reached a 15-year high and is set to go on rising. The growing use of genetically-modified mice in scientific research last year pushed the total number of animals used in laboratory testing to more than three million for the first time since 1991. More than two-thirds of all the animals used in scientific testing were mice. Another 406,000 procedures were carried out on rats. But the use of larger, more controversial species continued. Some 4,200 "non-human primates", including monkeys and marmosets, were used in British labs. That figure was a 10 per cent fall from 2005. And among the large mammals used last year were 36,377 sheep, 8,821 horses, 7,402 dogs, 5,334 cattle and 4,675 pigs.