Increase in animal testing in Switzerland last year
Almost 600,000 animals were used in animal experiments in Switzerland in 2023. This corresponds to an increase of 1.6% compared to the previous year. Around two-fifths of the animals were used in non-stressful experiments.
+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
The most frequently used animals were mice, birds, fish and rats, according to the animal testing statistics of the Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office (FSVO). There was a significant increase in the number of pigs used in animal experiments.
+ Swiss voters reject ban on animal testing
At 42,000 animals, their share has increased tenfold compared to the previous year. Pigs are used for animal health and animal welfare studies.
For the first time since 2018, there was a slight decrease of 2.4 percent in the number of severely stressful animal experiments, wrote the FSVO. These severely stressful experiments are carried out to research diseases in humans.
Translated from German by DeepL/mga
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.