XCity – City University Journalism Department Magazine 2010

Postgraduates go behind the scenes at animal testing lab

 By Duncan Brown

© Felix Clay

An animal testing organisation took 40 postgraduate newspaper students around a London laboratory last November to provide an insight into the “clouded issue” of medical testing on animals.

Understanding Animal Research (UAR) seeks to promote transparency and debate about using animals for medical research. UAR’s Wendy Jarrett said that the organisation wanted journalists to see what went on inside the laboratory, which carries out medical tests on animals including rabbits and guinea pigs.

But students were sceptical. David Christopher (Newspaper 2009), said: “Animal rights protestors make the point that these show-labs don’t let people see the more extreme instances of animal suffering. The trip was an insight into one side of the animal rights controversy.”

Ms Jarrett said that they had a right to be concerned. “There’s a quite reasonable uncomfortableness at not being given the whole story. [The students] assumed [the scenes of vivisection] that you see on trestle tables in Oxford Street had been hidden from them.

UAR also arranged for 15 journalism undergraduates to visit Huntingdon Life Sciences in November 2007.

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