This week, new footage of animal testing captured inside British laboratories emerged, shocking and sickening all who saw it.

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In the video, released by Animals International and Animal Aid, helpless beagles lie twitching and lethargic, as toxic chemicals surge into their lungs via masks strapped to their muzzles. Rabbits struggle as tubes are shoved down their throats, depositing chemicals into their delicate stomachs. Monkeys are clamped into restraints and forced to ingest anti-obesity drugs. Pigs writhe as substances are squirted onto deliberately inflicted wounds.

While this footage is new, the practices are not. They’re routine, common, and happening to hundreds of thousands of animals every single year in the UK. Most humans are rightly enraged when they see animals having chemicals forced into their fragile bodies, but in the industry, acts like those uncovered this week aren’t even considered egregious.

In my decades working in science, teaching, and advising on scientific policy, I’ve seen firsthand the terror and pain animals endure in laboratories: a ballpoint pen being used to crush the necks of live mice, rats plucked from a bucket, force-fed an unknown substance and then dropped into another bucket, cats kept in windowless rooms, fur partly shaved ready for surgery, and primates having their blood drawn.

I’ll never forget the sound of beagles, frenetically barking, jumping up and vying for affection, not knowing what was to come next, or the sight of monkeys reaching out of cages for a morsel of food. Some experiments on animals are even designed solely to measure how much suffering animals can endure. When their bodies give out, they’re discarded like a used syringe.

Aside from the cruelty involved, the most galling element of experiments on animals is how unnecessary they are. Toxicity tests using animals are notoriously unreliable at predicting the harmful effects of chemicals used in everyday products like furniture polish, paint, or sun cream. Cigarette smoke is a well-known example: tests on animals failed to reliably indicate danger to humans, postponing health warnings for years.

Animals are like us in all the ways that matter, such as being able to think, feel and suffer, but they’re often unlike us in how they respond to toxins and drugs.

Despite repeatedly leading researchers down dead ends, animal testing is still relied on instead of more advanced, species-relevant, non-animal methods that already exist. We no longer use Morse code, carrier pigeons, or typewriters to communicate, so why are we still clinging to testing methods developed decades ago?

If you still think animal testing is a ‘necessary’ evil, I can assure you, it’s not. Tests on animals can delay vital protections, making it highly likely that you or someone you love may one day be at the mercy of unreliable experiments on animals.

On social media posts sharing this new footage, some commenters called for imprisonment of those involved, but grotesque as these tests are, they’re legal and authorised by the UK Home Office. Without clear, urgent action, animals will continue to be restrained, poisoned and killed.

If this week's footage upsets you, I ask that you not turn away but join PETA in urging the government to urgently implement its plan to replace animal testing with kind, reliable, human-relevant methods such as organ-on-a-chip technology and advanced cell-based testing. Every day they delay, animals suffer.

Dr Julia Baines is Head of Science Policy at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, PETA.

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