A just-released Savanta poll commissioned by PETA of more than 1,000 young people, including those currently attending or considering attending university, found that an overwhelming majority believe universities should stop funding animal experimentation. Most said these kinds of animal rights would be a factor in their choice of university and affect their opinion of an institution.
Animal experimentation is a NO from students
The results come as universities nationwide – including the University of Bristol, which has been widely condemned for subjecting small animals to the cruel and widely criticised forced swim test – face a decline in student applications.
“The results couldn’t be clearer: the vast majority of young people oppose using university funds to torture animals in experiments like the forced swim test and find cruelty in laboratories a major turn-off when choosing where to study,” says PETA senior campaigns manager Kate Werner. “PETA is calling on higher education institutions – including the University of Bristol – to take heed of these results and on the Home Office to expedite the elimination of near-drowning tests in the UK”.
The poll asked 1,222 people aged 16 to 25 their opinions on animal testing at universities. It found that of those with an opinion, 82% feel that universities should divert money currently spent on animal experiments to other causes.
Of the university-age students with a stance on the forced swim test – which involves placing small animals into inescapable beakers of water in which they swim frantically out of fear of drowning, supposedly to shed light on human mental health conditions – 78% said that their opinion of their chosen university would be negatively affected if they found out the institution used the forced swim test.
Out of all respondents to the poll, 63% said they’d be more likely to choose a university that doesn’t conduct the forced swim test. The University of Bristol is one of the last universities in the UK still to conduct the test after the Home Office announced earlier this year its intention to eliminate it.
PETA calls on the government to act
A lecturer at the University of Bristol commented:
Universities are facing severe financial shortfalls and an extremely competitive environment in which to recruit students. If the University of Bristol continues to conduct the forced swim test after our competitors have rejected it, we are putting our reputation at risk. If we want to ensure that we remain an attractive choice for prospective students, we should be taking their concerns about the cruelty condoned in our labs very seriously.
PETA points out that prior to the last election, the previous government stated its intention to end the forced swim test. The current government has promised to follow through with this policy but has so far failed to provide a timeline.
The Labour Party committed to work towards phasing out animal testing completely in its manifesto, and PETA is calling on it to use the group’s Research Modernisation Deal – which lays out a strategy to switch from archaic animal experimentation to modern, human-relevant research methods – to take immediate steps towards ending all experiments on animals.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview.
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