Lab test horror: Terrified rabbits starved for 30 hours then put in stocks and injected with drugs
An undercover investigation has revealed that bunnies are being subjected to excruciating drug tests after being starved for up to 30 hours, denied water, then locked into vices – with some not surviving the ordeal. Some may feel that dying would be a better option for the rabbits, because those that did live through it were simply re-used and kept in bare metal cages that drove them half-mad.
The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, or BUAV, spent eight months at Wickham Laboratories in Hampshire secretly filming their procedures – and say that the lab inflicted ‘appalling suffering’ on thousands of animals in tests that are ‘crude, archaic and extremely cruel’. Among the lab’s subjects are a colony of around 100 rabbits which are used to test the side effects of antibiotics, blood filters and saline waters.
BUAV say that the test substances are injected into an ear vein that sometimes results in painful damage to the ear and weeping eyes. In other instances a temperature probe is inserted into the animal’s rectum and left for hours at a time. The rabbits clearly find these tests uncomfortable and distressing. Those that are too weak to be used again are killed afterwards, the others are returned to bare metal cages that just add to the suffering.