§ Mr. Tom Coxasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many experiments have been carried out in the last 10 years on animals with or without an anaesthetic in British laboratories; and if he will list the species of animals which will be required to be purpose-bred for vivisection in any new legislation.
§ Mr. MellorComparable information on the use of anaesthesia in experiments on living animals is available only from 1977 and is given in table 18 of "Statistics of experiments on living animals, Great Britain 1982" (Cmnd. 8986).
374WParagraph 49 of the White Paper "Scientific procedures on living animals" (Cmnd. 8883) makes it clear that under the new legislation all animals used in laboratories will have to be purpose-bred unless general or specific exemption is given, for example, for those which are only readily available from another source or from the wild.