After an intense campaign by policymakers and animal rights groups, the Green Hill animal breeding firm closed its doors, having handed more than 2,500 dogs over to animal rights campaigners in line with the court ruling.

Activists – and plenty of ordinary tweeters who just love dogs – celebrated. If you almost never give much thought to animal research, a headline about dogs in Italy being saved rather than sacrificed looks like good news.

But could the Green Hill story prove to be a pyrrhic victory for animal rights campaigners?

A bit of background

The first thing to consider is how many dogs are used in animal research and why scientists have to use dogs at all.

Using dogs for cosmetics is illegal in Europe but limited use for medical purposes is permitted, under strict conditions.

Around 21,000 dogs were used in European research, according to figures from 2008. While rats and mice are the most commonly used animals in laboratories, larger mammals such as dogs are needed for certain kinds of tests. Many of these are required by EU regulations  to ensure that medicines are safe and effective.

In the event that all research on dogs were to end, much of the current work scientists do in search for new cures of heart disease, cancer and dementia would reach a cul-de-sac.

That might be bad news for human and animal health research but what about laboratory animals themselves?

NIMBY

Europe has the strictest animal welfare standards in the world. If European countries were to become openly hostile to this kind of medical research, would it simply move elsewhere?

Is it unfair to suggest that the campaign against Green Hill is a case of ‘Not In My Back Yard’ – or NIMBY as we like to say.

And are European protests simply going to shift research to jurisdictions where standards are less rigorous?

For pragmatic animal welfare advocates – and dog lovers across Europe – the threat to animal research in Europe presents a dilemma: would pushing dog breeding out of Europe do more harm than good?

Animal welfare view

Animal rights groups on the whole object to all animal testing and many advocate that the results of the testing are unreliable, and that all experiments could be replaced with non-animal testing methods.
Many argue that scientists automatically opt to use animals in trials rather than seeking out non-animal alternatives, and that this mindset needs to change.
They campaign to modernise parts of the legislation governing animal testing arguing that it is out dated.
Science has never had to prove that animal testing works, yet there is a scientific and legal demand to prove that alternatives do work.
Animal rights groups want to see animals being regarded as sentient beings instead of tools for research.
There is also concern about the rise in use of animals in genetic manipulation and cloning.

Research view
The pharmaceutical and scientific community focus on developing new medicines that are effective in humans, and that  deliver the expected result with identified side effects before they get a licence to produce and go to market.
The scientific community argues that even though animal testing doesn’t always deliver perfect results with 100% accuracy, it’s still the only way to do invasive research to understand living systems and to provide the best possible assurance of the effects of new medicines.

Legislative view
In the new Lisbon treaty animals have been given rights as sentient beings, and it’s now a legal requirement not to use animals where there’s an alternative.
European and national legislation demands all medicines are tested in animals before they can be tested in humans.
Some medicines and vaccines must be tested on animals for every batch. These tend to be medicines that are made of, or derived from a live product – such as botox, polio vaccine etc.
The current regulation 86/609 has been revised and now provides further protection for animals. The new legislation, Directive 2010/63 will take effect in member states on 1st January 2013.

Read also:

What is animal testing exactly?

Are there any non-animal testing alternatives?