Big Win for Small Animals in the Making: UK Signals End of the Forced Swim Test
This is huge news for small animals! The UK Minister of State is confirming his intention to end licensing for a test that forces small animals to swim for their lives.
Mice and rats value their lives and feel pain and fear, just as humans do. These highly social animals communicate using high-frequency sounds, love their families, and care for one another. Thanks to PETA UK, laboratory workers will no longer force these intelligent social animals into the terror of near-drowning in the forced swim test.
End of the Forced Swim Test Is Within Reach in the UK
In a meeting with PETA UK and Member of Parliament Wera Hobhouse, Lord Hanson, Minister of State at the Home Office, confirmed the ministry’s intention to no longer grant licenses for the forced swim test, which the country requires before experimenters can conduct the test. The last remaining permits will expire in 2028 and will not be renewed. Now, we wait for the UK government to put this commitment into writing and send a clear signal to the global scientific community: The UK will not endorse this unreliable and unethical test.
What Is the Forced Swim Test?
During the forced swim test, experimenters induce panic in small animals by forcing them into inescapable cylinders of water. Fearing for their lives, they swim and desperately attempt to climb the steep sides of the container and even dive underwater in search of an escape.
Once the experiment is complete, experimenters usually kill the animals—either by gassing, blunt-force trauma to the head, an overdose of anesthetic, or breaking their necks—to study their brains.
If you’re wondering how watching terrified animals desperately try not to drown could benefit humans suffering from depression, you’re not alone.
Experts have repeatedly called the experiment’s validity into question or outright refuted any conclusions drawn from it about possible drugs to treat humans with this condition. Scientists with the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency have clarified that it is not required to develop antidepressants and said it could even hinder progress in finding effective new treatments.
Why This Will Be a Historic Win for Animals
When the Home Office makes this move official, it will mark the first end of a specific behavioral test on rats and mice in UK history. The decision follows relentless campaigning by PETA UK, including protests, meetings with officials, and a petition signed by 40,000 compassionate people.
Take Action to Ban the Forced Swim Test Everywhere
The forced swim test does nothing more than terrify animals and delay the development of new, effective treatments that are so desperately needed. At least 18 companies, including many of the world’s top pharmaceutical companies—Johnson & Johnson, Melior Discovery, Creative Biolabs, Sanofi, Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline, AbbVie Inc., Roche, AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk A/S, Boehringer Ingelheim, Pfizer, Amgen, and Bristol Myers Squibb—have said they will not conduct or permit forced swim test experiments in the future.
Please tell Novartis to ban this cruel and worthless test, too.
