Hungary has published its annual statistics showing the number of procedures carried out on animals for scientific purposes in 2015. This post has translated much of the statistics into English and aims to interpret the data as a whole. In 2015, Hungary conducted 184,648 animal procedures on animals – all regulated under EU Directive 2010/63. This figure is 8% lower than in 2014.

Overall, 87.7% of procedures were done on mice, birds and rats. This figure rises to 93.8% when cold-blooded animal reptiles, amphibians and fish are included. Dogs, cats and primates together accounted for less than 0.15% of the total.

Using the trend graph we can see how – bar an anomalous year in 2013 – there has been a steady downward trend in animal procedures in Hungary from over 300,000 in 2007, to less than 200,000 in 2015. Perhaps coincidentally the 2013 high point coincides with the implementation of the EU Directive (and its rules around counting procedures), meaning it is possible that this figure is a statistical error caused by incorrect data from the first year under a new counting regime.

Other things to note in the Hungarian statistics:

Only 3.8% of animal procedures were on genetically altered animal – a much lower proportion than, say, the UK, where almost half of procedures were the breeding of a genetically altered animal.

40% of procedures were for regulatory purposes, 34% were for translational or applied research, 21% was for basic research, and the remainder was for other purposes. It is common in smaller European countries for a larger proportion of animal studies to be for regulatory purposes.

Hungary also provided retrospective severity data for animal procedures. 71% of procedures were classified as mild, 15% as moderate, 6% as severe, and 8% as non-recovery (where the animal is not woken up after being anaesthetised for surgery).

Speaking of Research seek to be the best source of information on the internet on animal research and testing statistics. Unfortunately language barriers mean that we often find it hard to get statistics from non-English speaking countries. If you speak multiple languages and are able to help us out finding the statistics from other countries we would be very grateful. See more about how to help here.

Find more on the Hungarian stats here: https://www.nebih.gov.hu/data/cms/176/152/Allatkiserleti_jelentes_2015.pdf

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