The broken little beagle: Heartbreaking face of Qld’s hidden animal testing shame
Baxter cowered in the corner of the yard, afraid of everyone. He’d been locked in a cage for years, subjected to cruel experiments. Now Qld’s secret animal testing industry can be exposed.
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Baxter immediately shot through the open back door and cowered in the corner of the yard, afraid of everyone and everything.
The five-year-old beagle stayed there for hours on the first day in his new home after having spent years confined to a research laboratory somewhere in Queensland.
It is not known how Baxter ended up being used as an animal research “model”, what experimental treatment he was used for or how long he was there.
But he’s the heartbreaking face representing the millions of animals still used every year in Queensland’s secretive animal testing industry.
Now 9, Baxter was one of the lucky ones.
While he’s still afraid of anything metal, Baxter has otherwise adapted to the ‘outside world’ thanks to his new life with Gold Coast couple Dave and Lyndsay Woods of Arundel and fellow beagles, Willow, 7, and Maggie, 12, (also an ex-laboratory test subject).
But the same fate cannot be said for thousands, if not millions, more animals throughout Australia.
Most of his lab mates would be killed and discarded in the rubbish when they were no longer useful.
Now, there are calls for Queensland to follow other states and countries to increase transparency around the secretive industry and adopt a ‘right to release’ model giving ex-lab animals a chance at life.
Animal advocates, including Beagle Freedom Australia’s Nikki Steendam, are at the forefront of the battle with former lab animals going on to make incredible pets when given the chance to feel the love of a family, grass under their feet and sunshine on their backs.
“It was slow going at first because the rehoming, letting them go, is not mandatory,” she said about working with laboratories.
“Basically, if (laboratories) weren’t interested in rehoming animals themselves internally, to staff or families, they were putting them to sleep.”
More than 15 million animals were used in animal experiments in Queensland in 2021-22 alone - an 18 per cent jump from the 13 million just four years ago, according to the Qld Department of Agriculture and Fisheries Animal Ethics Committee annual reports.
Fish, livestock, reptiles, feral animals and genetically modified mice, rats, guinea pigs and non-human primates (monkeys) are among the most commonly used animals subjected to various invasive and non-invasive tests at universities, medical research institutions, pharmaceutical companies, government organisations and other agencies across Queensland.
But many Queenslanders would likely be shocked to learn more than 2600 domestic dogs and 760 cats were also used for scientific testing - a 35 per cent and 18 per cent increase in the past four years respectively.
The animals are often subjected to painful tests and surgeries - sometimes without anaesthesia - before being ‘humanely killed’ at the end of their experimental use.
Some tests anticipate the death of the animals from the outset - with the experiment complete once the animal dies without euthanasia.
It is difficult to easily obtain information about Queensland’s hidden animal testing industry, making it unclear how many animals meet the grisly end fate.
The industry is shrouded in secrecy with government Animal Ethics Committee reports failing to identify which animals were used for medical or veterinary research as opposed to those documented because they live in aquariums or zoos, were used in schools, were part of an observational wildlife count or which ones were used to improve agriculture industry methods.
There’s also a significant blind spot for the nearly half of all animal experiments performed in Queensland in the most recent financial year, with organisations able to skip reporting direct to the government and instead report to its own internal animal welfare committee.
Many who work in the scientific community and animal advocates alike agree the animal testing industry remains too secretive and are pushing for more transparency through the new Openness Agreement on Animal Research and Teaching in Australia.
There are also increasing calls for Queensland to follow the lead of the New South Wales government, which made the rehoming of ex-laboratory test animals mandatory in November 2022 thanks to the Right to Release advocacy campaign.
While animal testing - which often precedes human clinical trials - has led to advancements in treatments for ailments such as Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, long Covid, epilepsy and some types of medications including antidepressants, animal advocates have described some of the testing procedures as “cruel and unnecessary”.
Animal Justice Party MP Emma Hurst, 42, and other animal welfare groups are pushing for bans on experiments like the forced swim test (FST), a behavioural test invented in the 1970s where mice are placed in an inescapable beaker of water and forced into a survival swim until they float, or otherwise.
The first rodents to ‘give up’ are theorised to be more depressed than those who continued to swim, with studies claiming the latter mice had been given a dose of the test medication.
According to Animal-Free Science Advocacy (formerly Humane Research Australia), the use of the FST is still permitted at the University of Queensland.
When asked to confirm it’s claim, a UQ spokeswoman declined to answer.
Griffith University banned the test in 2020.
In Queensland, the use of animals for any type of scientific research has to be approved either by an institution’s own Animal Ethics Committee (AEC) or one from the DAF.
Each registrant also submits an Annual Animal Use Statistic report to DAF, but only some of that information is published for privacy reasons.
Those reports contain project information such as impact on the animals used in the studies, whether the research is observational or how many animals have “death as an endpoint” at the completion of the study.
According to the annual DAF AEC summaries, the majority of the more than 150 project applications submitted in the most recent financial year were for ‘environmental studies’.
In the 2021-22 report, 1.3 per cent of new projects expected ‘death as an end point (not euthanasia), while 7.2 per cent anticipated an ‘animal unconscious without recovery’ result.
According to an ‘Animals under experimentation’ document, an animal is rendered unconscious under controlled circumstances with as little pain as possible in the latter category.
“Procedures are carried out on the unconscious animal which is then killed without regaining consciousness,” the document states.
Examples include blood collection from anaesthetised dogs prior to euthanasia or “teaching surgical techniques on live, anaesthetised patients which are not allowed to recover following the procedure.”
Details on how many animals were expected to die as part of each individual project were not publicly available.
THE RIGHT TO RELEASE
Not all former test animals are as fortunate as Maggie and Baxter, who got a second chance at life thanks to volunteers from Beagle Freedom Australia (BFA) - one of only two charities that liaise with research organisations to secure the release of laboratory animals.
Beagle Freedom Australia has spearheaded the Australian Right to Release campaign, which calls for the government to make rehoming test animals mandatory.
President Nikki Steendam, 45, said while she had been rescuing beagles through her Melbourne-based organisation since 2007, the volunteer group branched out to research animals in 2013 after learning of the need.
She said the charity now takes in hundreds of cats and dogs of all breeds, as well as any other animal a laboratory might be willing to release to them.
“It just depends what research they’re doing … but we don’t get to know what they were used for,” she said.
While beagles are the dog ‘breed of choice’ due to their docile and forgiving nature, animal welfare group volunteers say they have come across everything from greyhounds, Foxhounds, Jack Russell Terriers and even an Australian Cattle dog and a French bulldog being used in Australian research.
But any rehoming success of former laboratory animals is also only because a research institution is willing to work with the rescue groups, according to Ms Steendam and Paula Wallace from Liberty Foundation Australia.
They said negotiations between institutions could sometimes take years.
“A lot of time we have to sign a nondisclosure agreement, we’re not allowed to say the company they’re from or what they’ve done,” Ms Steendam said.
“It’s because they think there’s a bit of a stigma behind using animals for research … (and) they’ve done a really good job at hiding it from the public.”
The South Gippsland resident said at least 15 beagles had been rehomed throughout Queensland in the past three years thanks to her organisation’s partnership with a local research institution.
Ms Steendam said BFA had approached up to four Queensland-based research centres, ‘but it’s not their top priority to get back to us’.
Ms Wallace, 50, of Gosford, who started Liberty Foundation Australia in 2017, said the volunteer rescue group focused on all domestic companion species, including dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, rodents and fish.
“Since 2017, we’ve rehomed more than 650 animals from research … (including) beagles, beagle crosses, kelpie crosses, a French bulldog beagle cross, and we’ve even had two purebred labradors,” she said.
About 200 guinea pigs and rats have been rehomed throughout Queensland in the past three years thanks to the group.
While some animals come out of their clinical environments with no problem, both women agreed the most common behavioural trait among released test animals was timidness due to lack of socialisation.
In a BFA submission to the Queensland government’s 2022 review of the Animal Care Act, Ms Steendam made several recommendations in relation to the ethical use of animals for scientific purposes, including calling on the government to make rehoming of animals used in scientific research and teaching mandatory.
“Currently, the sensitive nature of each release we at BFA secure is imperative to future releases taking place,” she wrote in the submission.
“These relationships can take many years of negotiations to build.
“Trust and a good working relationship with a facility is the only way to get animals released.
“If that confidence were to be broken in any way, it would shut down further releases and risk the safety of other animals still housed at the facilities.”
Ms Steendam also called for “transparency around the reporting of statistics of animals used in research and teaching in Queensland, including breakdowns of observational only studies and the fate of animals at the end of their use.
“There is currently a lack of transparency in the reported numbers coming from Queensland,” she wrote.
The advocate said she never received a response from the state government.
THE SECRECY SURROUNDING ANIMAL EXPERIMENTS
Attempts to obtain detailed information about how many animals are used in Queensland research experiments – and their fate - proved difficult, with the only publicly available government data collated by the DAF AEC’s.
The use of animals for scientific purposes must be registered under Queensland law but the legislation’s broadly defined ‘scientific purposes’ comprises everything from medical research to field trials, environmental studies, producing biological products, product testing, teaching and more.
Out of 383 organisations registered to use animals, 143 report to their own ethics committees, meaning their data is not included in the statistics published by DAF.
The Australian Code for the Care and Use of Animals for Scientific Purposes - which was updated in 2021 to reflect Australia’s 2020 ban on cosmetics testing on animals - stipulates any harm, including pain and distress, in or to animals approved for use for scientific research purposes must be avoided or minimised.
WHY ARE ANIMALS STILL USED IN MEDICAL RESEARCH?
A veterinarian, who asked to remain anonymous but who has worked with laboratory animals, told the Courier Mail research was underway in Queensland for numerous conditions, from childhood epilepsy, dementia, Parkinson’s disease, tuberculosis and malaria and more.
They said humans owed “the invention of lifesaving insulin to research with dogs.”
“In addition, routine blood transfusions, bone marrow transplants and all types of organ transplants are owed to research using animals, and very brave human patients, who volunteered after the initial animal trials,” the vet said.
“Our immunotherapies that are revolutionising cancer treatments, for melanoma and childhood leukaemia, for example, were developed using mice.
“Skin grafts, for saving the lives of burn patients, were developed with the help of pigs and sheep had been critical in development of knee and hip replacements and heart surgeries that are all now just ‘routine’ procedures for so many people.”
The vet said test animals were also used to develop therapies for pet cats and dogs, for farm animals, and to help save endangered species.
“Unfortunately, animals are still used in predominantly medical research, as at present, we do not have non-animal alternatives that properly allow us to study treatments for complex diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, and long Covid,” they said.
“Whilst we’re working towards non-animal alternatives, this is the best we have, and this is a sad reality.”
Inventions such as the cochlear implant and the cervical cancer vaccine are among several medical advances where animals were used in the research.
The technology behind home pregnancy tests and rapid antigen tests, used to detect Covid-19, was also developed in the 1970s using animal test subjects.
They said many dogs and cats participating in veterinary trials nowadays were brought in by their owners.
“Mostly these are public owned pets participating in veterinary clinical trials, to develop new treatments for diseases of pets, such as kidney disease in cats, and there’s a new bone cancer study happening in pet dogs at UQ right now,” the vet said.
“Cats are, on a small scale, used for eye disease research, and dogs, in very small numbers in other areas.”
Animal-Free Science Advocacy CEO Rachel Smith said the non-profit, anti-vivisection organisation advocates for the use of non-animal methods to replace ‘animal models’ in biomedical research and teaching.
“Such methods include organ-on-a-chip, microdosing, computer modelling, non-invasive imaging techniques, 3D tissues and simulators,” she said.
Snake venom research is one example where test animals – which previously died during the experiments - have now been replaced by technology, thanks to UQ-led research.
CALLS FOR MORE OPENNESS AND TRANSPARENCY
Many who work in the Australian scientific community are urging animal testing organisation to be more transparent - including why and how they use dogs like Baxter and Maggie.
The relevant parties – which range from private pharmaceutical companies to universities, hospital, government and education departments - have been invited to sign Australia’s new Openness Agreement on Animal Research and Teaching in Australia, launched in August by the Australian and New Zealand Council for the Care of Animals in Research and Teaching (ANZCCART).
Modelled on the UK’s successful Concordat on Openness on Animal Research introduced in 2014 and now replicated in several countries, the agreement asks signatories to voluntarily pledge greater transparency in all facets of animal research.
Though most Queensland universities and some private research centres include basic information about their use of animals in science on their websites, Townsville’s James Cook University was the only institution from the Sunshine State, among 30 research establishments nationally, to sign the inaugural openness agreement.
Central Queensland University has since confirmed their intention to sign the agreement.
The ANZCCART agreement’s main proponent, Malcolm France, said it was important for people to access information from all sides in order to make an informed decision on the ethics of experimenting on animals.
“This is not possible if the research community is not transparent enough for people to access that information,” he said.
Mr France, 63, a consultant veterinarian specialising in the care and management of animals used in research, said transparency was “a fundamental expectation across society these days, as it should be.”
“Nearly all animal research in Australia is funded either by the taxpayer, philanthropic charities or private donors, all of whom have a right to know how their money is being spent.
“There is a need to correct some of the misunderstandings about animal research – for example it is decades since animals were used for testing cosmetics in Australia and even then, it was only conducted on a very small scale, yet there is still a perception that it is ongoing.”
But he said what was once considered ethically accepted decades ago had changed.
“The goal posts of what society regards as ethically acceptable are not static – we conducted practice surgery on pound dogs when I was a veterinary student and it was appallingly brutal at times,” Mr France said.
“Since then, the use of pound dogs for research or teaching has been banned in most jurisdictions once it was clear that it no longer had ‘social licence’.
Queensland banned the use of pound dogs being used for research in 2010.
Out of the several Queensland public and private research centres questioned on the topic by the Courier Mail - UQ, Griffith University and DAF representatives said a decision on signing the ANZCCART agreement was under consideration.
Queensland University of Technology and the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute did not indicate their organisation’s attitude to the openness agreement, instead providing written statements outlining the existing transparency of their respective institutions.
The question was not answered by University of Southern Queensland or Australian Defence Force representatives.
Miss Smith, of Landsborough on the Sunshine Coast, said Animal-Free Science Advocacy backed the right to release movement and welcomed the new openness agreement.
“It’s quite a minimal first step but from HRA’s perspective, it’s a positive step … as it’s quite a secretive industry,” she said.
The advocate said data about all animals used in research should be included in the one state-wide report.
“They should detail the whole picture, including the numbers of animals used, what the purpose was, the level of suffering, the species – and not just the ones under the DAF oversight,” Miss Smith said.
“Otherwise we can’t see if there has been any reduction in the animals used.
“We could have a claim saying there’s minimal numbers being used in research, but it would be an unsubstantiated claim really.
“From our perspective if you don’t report on it you can’t measure any trends, it’s quite a selective trend.”
You can sign the Right to Release petition HERE
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