PETA India Urges Central Regulatory Body to Introduce a Database of Non-Animal Experimentation Methods Via New Proposed Rules

For Immediate Release:

13 May 2022

Contact:

Ankita Pandey; [email protected]

Hiraj Laljani; [email protected]

Delhi – This week, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India submitted life-saving recommendations to the Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals (CPCSEA) – a statutory body constituted under The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, seeking reforms to the proposed CPCSEA Administration Rules, 2022. PETA India’s recommended amendments regarding the core functions of CPCSEA include maintaining a publicly available and up-to-date database of non-animal methods which can be used to replace experimentation on animals, including for teaching and training. The group points out that a comprehensive and regularly updated database of non-animal test methods would empower CPCSEA to reject proposals using animals.

Although the Indian government doesn’t publicly disclose the number of animals used each year in experiments approved by CPCSEA, more than a million scientific procedures were estimated to have been conducted in 2015, representing a more than 20% increase over the 10 years prior.

In the proposed reforms, PETA India also urges CPCSEA to maintain detailed records of the number and species of animals bred for and used in experiments. The group suggests that the committee comprehensively analyse proposals calling for the use of animals so as to reject any for which the benefits do not outweigh the harm caused. Furthermore, when experiments using animals are approved, PETA India urges CPCSEA to conduct critical reviews of the outcomes to assess whether the use of animals actually led to any measurable advances in human health.

PETA India has also shared with CPCSEA its Research Modernisation Deal, which details the failure of experiments on animals to lead to treatments and cures for humans and provides a comprehensive strategy for modernising research through effective, non-animal methods.

“Animals are suffering in painful, invasive tests behind laboratory walls, and much-needed reforms to the regulatory functioning of CPCSEA are their only lifeline,” says PETA India Science Policy Advisor Dr Ankita Pandey. “PETA India is encouraging a move away from archaic animal experiments in favour of superior and humane non-animal methods, which will benefit the public, the future of science, and animals and uphold the spirit of The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.”

PETA India – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA India, please visit PETAIndia.com or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

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