Date of response: 23 July 2024
We have now considered your request of 27 June 2024 for the following information:
I request to know the information for the year 2022 (01/01/2022 to 31/12/2022) the year 2023 (01/01/2023 to 31/12/2023).
Question 1. Did your university conduct experiments on animals in the years 2022 & 2023?
Question 2. How many animals were used in experiments(species & number of each)?
Question 3. How many animals were bred on the premises (species & number of each)?
Question 4. What was the nature and outcome of these experiments?
Question 5. What are the Home Office licence classifications for these experiments in terms of pain, lasting harm, etc. if classified (species & number of each)?
Question 6. Were the animals used for medical or non-medical research?
Question 7. Which departments of your university were or are engaged in such research?
Question 8. How many animals were killed without being used for experiments (species & a number of each)?
Question 9. How many animals were rehomed (species & number of each)?
Question 10. Of those that were not re-homed, why not?
Question 11. Does the university receive an income for performing animal research?
Question 12. Does the university incur any costs by performing animal research?
Question 13. Were there more non-animal research methods used than animal methods? Eg. 70% where non-animal models were used and 30% where animal models were used
Question 14. Which non-animal research methods are available at the university? Eg. 3D printing, human skin cells, organ-on-a-chip.
If any of this information is already in the public domain, please can you direct me to it, with page references and URLs if necessary.
Our response:
Unfortunately, on this occasion it is not possible to provide any of the requested information for question 8 of your request: ‘How many animals were killed without being used for experiments’. We have determined that the cost of finding and assembling some of the requested information will exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ as defined by section 12 of the Act and the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004/3244.
The ‘appropriate limit’ of £450, which equates to 18 hours’ work as defined by the Information Commissioners Office, can relate to one request in its entirety or to a series of linked requests. If the University cannot locate, retrieve and extract some or all of the requested information within the 18 hours we are not obliged to retrieve any of the requested information.
To explain our position, all protected animals, as defined under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1886 (ASPA) that are bred or procured for the intention of animal research at the University are held under ASPA. For information on animal welfare please see the following University web page: Animal Research Concordat - University Policies - About (uea.ac.uk) under ‘Welfare of animals’.
Records for animals bred or procured by the University for the intention of use within research is held by the Faculty of Science. Whilst this departments does record information relating to the number of animals and species killed without being used for regulated procedures, there is no central digital record of where this information is held. This information is held in paper form within several locations: the animal’s individual breeding record, records relating to the ‘allocation to experiment’ and replacement breeding stock records.
The breeding records contain information relating to the species of breeding pairs / trios and numbers of subsequent litters of mice, wild type mice, Xenopus toads (Laevis and Tropicalis) and Zebrafish.
From these records we have established, for 2022 alone, there are a minimum of 130 breeding pairs / trios, each producing approximately six to ten litters of up to 10 pups per litter. We have identified a minimum of 780 litter records (a minimum of 7,800 individual pups) which could potentially fall into the scope of your request.
In order to identify and locate the exact information relating to the number of those animals bred on site, and exterminated without having been used within research, we would have to manually interrogate and extract the relevant information from these 780 litter records.
We estimate it would require an average of three minutes per litter record to extract, record and locate any relevant information which equates to 39 hours, which exceeds the appropriate limit.
We are sorry we cannot provide the data you requested, but trust this response explains our position.
In order to assist you in refining your request, we would be able to respond to all other remaining questions of your response, should you wish to re-submit your request.
We should point out that any revised request you submit will be treated as a new FOI request, and the 20-working-day time-limit will begin again.
We are sorry that we are not able to provide a response to you but hope our explanation has outlined our situation.