Federal government adopts a new strategy to reduce animal testing
The federal government has introduced a new strategy to reduce the number of animals used in regulatory laboratory testing across Canada – a strategy that some experts estimate that thousands of less animals can be subject to painful or toxic trials every year.
strategyPublished online in mid -July, asks the government to identify and promote the use of scientifically viable options scientifically for chemical testing under Canadian Environmental Protection Act on vertebrae animals such as cats, dogs, mice, and rabbits.
However, it will not affect the use of animals for testing drugs, medical products and other things such as food products.
This step comes about two years after the federal government abolished the use of animals for testing cosmetic products.
Amy Clippinger, Animal Rights Organization for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), a managing director, said the strategy can create a difference – even if chemicals and pesticides form a small ratio of testing that uses animals.
“These can be thousands of animals. A lot of animals are used in regulatory testing,” the clippinger said.
However, experts like Clipping also say that the level of resources and priority is that the government dedicates to the strategy, determining its impact.
The step flows from the Bill S-5 adopted in June 2023, which created a series of amendment to the Canadian Environment Protection Act. The strategy focuses on a long consultation in recent years.
Strategy is published before a report by the discovered Journalism Bureau (IJB) Published on 7 AugustWhich expands the fierce experiments conducted on puppies at an Ontario Hospital as part of its heart research. IJB’s revelations about experiments inspired Ontario Premier Doug Ford to ban testing on dogs and cats in the province, calling it “cruel” and “unacceptable”.
Ontario Premier Dug Ford says that future laws will ban testing on pets such as cats and dogs. Ford was speaking at a news conference in London, Onts on Monday.
According to the Canadian Council on Animal Care (CCAC), which oversees the use and care of animals for testing and research, an estimated 3.1 million animals were used for scientific purposes in Canada in 2023.
Pierre Vericolt, Executive Director, CCAC, says that dogs and cats are used for a small part of animals. CCAC estimated that 16,000 dogs represented 0.5 percent of animals used in 2023. The use of half dogs was 25 percent in regulatory testing, 25 percent in teaching and 25 percent in research.
Cats were used for 0.1 percent of animals.
Vericolt said that 36 percent were rats and 32 percent were fish. One and 17.5 percent of cattle was.
He said that the new policy of the government goes to the heart of 3R’s animal testing: refinement, deficiency and replacement.
Verreault said that there are options for animal testing for regulatory approval, but they would have to be balanced against things such as the government’s need to ensure public safety and preserve the environment.
“It can be computer modeling. It can also use tissues and cells from an organism, but not the total animals,” they said about possible options. “Any movement in that direction is a good.”
Developing option is expensive
It is not always possible to avoid animal testing.
Cloe Dupuis, Senior Media Relations Advisor to Canada’s National Research Council (NRC) – one of the federal government organizations, who has bought animals for years – said that the protocol of NRC states that animals are used only in scientific procedures when there is no other option.
He said that despite the major technological progress, “Animal models still remain standard to generate efficacy and safety data sets” when a product is being considered for regulatory approval.
Sabrina Ramkelwan, president of the Clinical Research Association of Canada, says new drugs and health products often require animal tests before obtaining them for clinical trials in humans.
If Canada wants to reduce or eliminate animal testing, it should reconcile efforts with other countries, he said.
“If we make this change in Canada, animal tests are going to be done – it is going to be just elsewhere,” he said.
Professor Angela Fernandez of Toronto University law welcomed the new strategy.
“The types of tests we are talking about are forcing the ingestion of chemicals,” he said. “It can be through food digestion, it can be an injection, it can be an exposure, inhalation. Therefore, these are really very cruel tests.”
Fernandez says the strategy will encourage the development of options, while there is no mention for such projects.
The clipping also questions whether the federal government will dedicate the money required to succeed the strategy and the employees’ time.
“Otherwise, this is just another document that is not online that does not result in real change,” he said.
Health Canadian spokesman Joshua Coke said that the money to implement the strategy would come out of the current budget. Coke said that the department is also planning several initiatives to reduce the use of animals in regulatory testing.
“To reduce the dependence on animal testing and promote the use of animals in testing, promoting the methods that change, decrease or refine in testing are priority for the government, and efforts will continue on many fronts to pursue this important work.”
