Animal Testing has come on the agenda again following the introduction of a private members bill by Andrew Bartlett and a Senate inquiry.

The figures associated with this are alarming:

Latest available figures show 488,808 animals - 1339 a day, or more than 55 an hour - were used in experiments in Victoria in 2003. This is above the long-term average of 449,000 and significantly higher than the 1997 figure of 324,308.

Naturally The Age ran with a picture of a rather cute and human looking monkey. I can’t help but feel this is overly emotive. It seems quite obvious to me that only a very small minority of the animal tested on were monkeys.

Of course it raises interesting issues with regards to why animal testing is bad. I’d argue that for the most part there are no concerns regarding biodiversity. So surely the issue becomes animal suffering which, as a principle, I believe we should minimise. However do we distinguish between the suffering of a monkey and a mouse? I believe Peter Singer says that suffering is directly relative to sentience and draws the line somewhere around the squid. Then of course there’s the broader issue of the alleviation of human suffering.

Ultimately we probably do test on Animals too much. Clearly a degree of complacency has crept it. It just concerns me that we can get overly emotive about soft fury animals. While I realise that there is often alternatives to animal testing and I believe these should be used as much as is possible a degree of animal testing is always needed.