Ufrieda Ho
The number of animal experiments in South Africa is anybody’s guess. South African vivisectors are left to police themselves and are governed by a voluntary code of ethics.
Despite calls by anti-vivisection lobbyists and some scientists for the government to produce transparent monitoring of the industry, the government is still to act.
“It’s like hitting into a blank wall and all we get are platitudes,” says anti-vivisection lobbyist Michele Pickover of South Africans for the Abolition of Vivisection (Saav). In 1998 Saav formally called for proper regulations.
Hanri Kruger, registrar at the South African Veterinary Council (SAVC), says: “We support the principle of legislation to regulate animal experimentation and requested the government in 1995 to set up an independent governing body, to control animal experimentation, that should report to a minister of Cabinet. Such a body has not been created to date despite our regular follow-up requests.”
The SAVC supports vivisection, but Kruger says the national ethics code drafted in 1990 by roleplayers in animal research is flawed as only voluntary compliance exists.
As animal rights groups commemorate World Day for Laboratory Animals on April 24, they will again raise the call for the government to speed up the regulation process.
Another concern is that slack regulations in South Africa could create loopholes for international vivisectors to conduct experiments here, where they know they’re unlikely to be caught out.
Dr Daan Goosen, vice-president of the South African Association for Laboratory Animal Scientists, says he is often approached by scientists from abroad who want unscrupulous testing performed in South Africa because the same testing is outlawed in their own countries. “There is a lot of negligence, and these days unskilled, lay people working in laboratories are even allowed to perform tests.”
He says the lack of regulation has led to inaccuracy of results and unnecessary duplication of tests. South Africa’s scientific research results are also compromised as global research standards aren’t implemented locally.
Goosen says there is a decline in membership numbers of the South African Association for Laboratory Animal Scientists, which could indicate a growing disintegration of adherence to a national ethics code.
Millions of animals are used each year in animal experimentation in a booming trade that is big business for some.
In the United Kingdom vivisectors have to make public the details of experiments. In 1999 the Research Defence Society, which promotes testing, reported that 2,6-million scientific experiments took place on live animals in the UK alone. The figure excludes the number of animals used in cosmetics testing.
In South Africa no such statistics are available. This creates enormous hurdles for the anti-vivisection lobby to act as independent watchdogs against cruel and unethical treatment of laboratory animals.
Animal testing in South Africa has been around for about 70 years and has been part of heated international debate since the late 1800s. All South Africa’s medical universities experiment on animals as do many state research institutions and private drug, cosmetics and chemicals companies.
Saav and groups such as Beauty Without Cruelty and Earthlife Africa charge that the government is dragging its feet in opening up these institutions to public scrutiny.
Pickover says without legislation vivisectors can duck on issues of accountability and the industry remains veiled. “We are shunted from pillar to post and everybody is just shrugging off responsibility for this.”
The Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs, which primarily oversees the vivisection industry, promised after a workshop in 1998 that working groups would be initiated for stakeholders.
The anti-vivisectionists have since sought the intervention of the public protector to hold the government to this promise of setting up the processes that are supposed to culminate in the creation of an animal welfare Act.
“If they were on the right track then why would we have to go to the public protector?” Pickover asks. “Ideally we want to see an end to all animal experimentation but regulating the industry would be a step in the right direction.”
The anti-vivisection lobby also wants the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism to start taking up the issue.
Department representative JJ Tabane says the department will not be drawn into an issue that is essentially the responsibility of the Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs.
But Pickover says: “Their responsibility includes wildlife and the implementation of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species regulations, and because many wild animals are used in experimentation they definitely have a responsibility in regulating the vivisection trade.”
Keith Ramsay, registrar of livestock improvement at the Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs, says while the department acknowledges a need to move towards proper legislation in the form of an animal welfare Act he believes the national code of ethics used by vivisectors has worked well. “The self-regulation by ethical vivisectors has been very good and there is a very strict screening process. Not just anyone can do an experiment on an animal.”
Ramsay says the department has been looking at regulation models used in countries such as New Zealand and maintains that the process towards creating an Act will include all roleplayers. Yet he can’t say why the process has not progressed.
The government is also considering using the South African Bureau of Standards to draw up vivisection regulatory guidelines, a move that has been slammed by the anti-vivisection lobbyists as the bureau itself experiments on animals.