Ricky Gervais Pushes To End Animal Testing Across The UK

Ricky Gervais is both a comedian and an activist for animals’ rights. His latest campaign has been an effort to ban all animal testing across the United Kingdom.

Currently, Gervais is lobbying the UK government to include laboratory animals in their Animal Welfare Act, which makes it a crime to “cause unnecessary suffering to an animal,” as well as makes it the responsibility of those caring for an animal to make sure the animal’s wellbeing is being met.

Gervais’ campaign was born from the inspiration of others who organized a protest at the MBR Acres, which is a “factory farm” in Cambridgeshire, that has come under fire for breeding roughly 2,000 dogs per year.

These animals are then sent off to various toxicology tests across the country to be turned “laboratory-ready.” Animal rights activists have shared their claims of seeing lab workers handling dogs by the scruffs of their necks and stuffing them into crates that are loaded onto trucks.

As Gervais shared with The Independent, “I’m deeply shocked to learn that thousands of beautiful beagles are intensively bred, right here in the peace of the British countryside, for painful and terrifying toxicity experiments that are also now proven to entirely fail the search for human treatments and cures.”

Gervais is currently campaigning for change alongside actor Peter Egan, who shared the petition for the law change.

As he stated, “It’s in my heart I hope it’s in yours; please sign my Parliament Petition; laboratory animals must be included in the Animal Welfare Act, to ban horrific experiments on dogs and other animals.”

It’s in my heart I hope it’s in yours; please sign my Parliament Petition; laboratory animals must be included in the Animal Welfare Act, to ban horrific experiments on dogs & other animals.

Sign & RT https://t.co/H9Eab2JWsH#EndAnimalTesting #ScarlettsLaw #EDM175 #Dogs pic.twitter.com/yPiIuwMrQo

— Peter Egan (@PeterEgan6) July 21, 2021

Activists have been monitoring the site where the dogs are staying, and have shared that they’ve seen animals being force-fed chemicals or made to inhale pesticides – sometimes for as long as 90 days in a row – all without medical treatment or pain relief.

However, the laboratory has come forward to say that these experiments conducted on animals are mild actions, like blood tests, and are used in the development of vaccines.

According to The Independent, one MBR Acres spokesperson said, “It does not undertake regulatory toxicology or other experiments and has only animal care staff working on its sites.”

Regardless of whether or not you believe the spokesperson or the animal rights activists, it would be nice to see a full end to animals being used in laboratory settings. Hopefully Gervais and his members can help to bring about some change for the betterment of all animals across the UK.