Push to end ’distressing’ experiments on mice and rats

A parliamentary inquiry into animal testing urged the NSW government to ban forced swimming and smoke inhalation tests for research animals.

A NSW parliamentary committee into medical research has recommended a ban on animal experiments that force mice to swim or drown, and to inhale smoke.

Animal experiments that force mice to swim or drown and to inhale smoke will be banned if the recommendations of a NSW parliamentary committee into medical research are accepted.

However, despite hundreds of submissions by the public and animal welfare organisations, including the RSPCA and Humane Research Australia, to ban animal testing on primates, the inquiry found it was “still imperative to use animals in medical research”.

HRA chief Rachel Smith said she hadn’t expected a ban on primate experiments, but described the proposed phasing out of the mice experiments, for which HRA had campaigned for almost 10 years, as “a pleasing result”

Inquiry witness and former animal care manager Lisa Craig described the “distress suffered” by mice in the “smoking tower test”, when the animals are placed in small chambers and forced to inhale smoke or other hazardous materials daily for up to 18 weeks.

The forced swim test involves putting a rodent in a clear cylinder of lukewarm water where it will attempt to swim and climb the ­cylinder wall. Many die from inhaling water.