Animal Experiments
The Swedish regulation of animal experiments is stricter than the EU directive requires, and includes a wider definition of animal experiments as well as mandatory ethical review of all experiments.
Legislation
Animal Experiments are regulated through the Animal Protection Act and the Animal Protection Orinance as well as more detailed regulations issued by the Board of Agriculture. TheSwedish legislation on animal protection, animal experiments and more useful information is available at Codex >>
The Swedish ethics committees
In Sweden each planned animal experiment must be submitted to one of the seven regional animal experimental ethics committees for a review. Experiments on animals are illegal unless the project has been approved by an ethics committee.
In accordance with the Swedish freedom of information legislation, the applications are available for anyone who is interested in seeing them. The information within the application includes a description of the planned experiment, the purposeof the project, the number and species of animals to be used, the name of the responsible researcher and where the animals are kept. Projects can be approved for a maximum time of 3 years.
Number of animals used for experiments in Sweden
The table below lists the number of animals used in Experiments in Sweden according to the European definition (EU directive 86/609 on the use of vertebrate animals for experiments) and according to the Swedish definition.
The Swedish definition includes animals killed for use of their tissue, organs or cells, as well as behavioural experiments, feeding experiments etc. From 2003, test fishing to estimate stock densities of different speices, is defined as animal experiments. Including these fish, the number of animals used increased from about 500 000 to over 6,6 million.
The increase of animals used in 2005 (Swedish definition) is mainly due to a large research projekt on feeding fish and another project to develop more humane methods to kill large numbers of laying hens when they are being replaced.
|
Year |
|
EU definition |
Swedish definition |
Research fishing |
|
2006 |
|
532 685 |
760 000 |
6 600 000 |
|
2005 |
|
505 681 |
1 273 000 |
6 400 000 |
|
2004 |
|
446 936 |
846 000 |
7 100 000 |
|
2003 |
|
518 053 |
520 000 |
9 500 000 |
|
2002 |
|
281 184 |
481 000 |
not available |
|
2001 |
|
269 710 |
439 000 |
not available |
|
2000 |
|
288 800 |
402 500 |
not available |
|
1999 |
|
324 067 |
552 000 |
not available |
|
1998 |
|
300 704 |
493 000 |
not available |
|
1997 |
|
266 685 |
435 000 |
not available |
|
1996 |
|
286 012 |
718 000 |
not available |
|
1995 |
|
331 201 |
558 000 |
not available |
|
1990 |
|
338 343 |
494 000 |
not available |
|
1985 |
|
not available |
519 000 |
not available |
|
1982 |
|
not available |
488 500 |
not available |