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Asked by anon-260045 to Pam on 30 Sep 2020.
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Pam Harrison answered on 30 Sep 2020:
Hi.
I personally don’t work with the animals but I have had tours to see where they are kept, how they are treated and the testing.
It’s a necessary part of the industry but we make sure we get the most possible information from the least amount of animals. Every bit of that animal will give us valuable information on how a potential medicine will work and any safety concerns.
The animals themselves seem happy, when I saw the dogs they had lots of space inside and out to play and got lots of attention from their keepers. You could tell the dogs loved the people, they didn’t associate them with anything cruel they were someone to play with and who gave them food!
Smaller animals are kept in cages similar to if they were a pet and get regular attention.
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Comments
Tim commented on :
This is a very interesting question. NHS Blood and Transplant was formed about 15 years ago from the National Blood service and The Transplant service. Before that about 30 years ago we closed the animal house we used to have. We had rabbits to make antibodies to blood groups so we could use them to test and type peoples blood and make reagents from them. So around about that time manufactures of reagents, including us, got a little smarter and instead of having live animals we only needed a few cells (and now even get bacteria) to grow and with some very clever science we can get the cells (or bacteria) to make all sorts of antibodies we need. So we don’t need to keep animals for the last 30 years or so.