Animal Experiments
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the Accredited official statistics, Annual statistics of scientific procedures on living animals, Great Britain 2025, updated on 27 August 2026, Figure 5: Number of experimental procedures involving specially protected species 2025 to 2025, how many of the 17,317 animals died as a direct result of the procedures.
Answered by Home Office
The requested figure is not available from the published statistics. The 17,317 figure relates to procedures involving specially protected species, rather than to the number of individual animals.
Of those procedures, 77 were classified as non-recovery. A non-recovery procedure is carried out entirely under general anaesthesia from which the animal does not regain consciousness. This does not represent all animals that may have died as a direct result of a regulated procedure, because the published data do not separately identify all such deaths.
Under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, licensed establishments are required to maintain records of the source, use and final disposal of protected animals bred, kept or used at the establishment for regulated activities. These records must be made available to Home Office Inspectors on request.
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