Queen’s Bench Division
Published August 27, 2007

Regina (British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection) v Secretary of State for the Home Department

Before Mr Justice Mitting
Judgment July 27, 2007

The death of an animal used in a regulated procedure for scientific experimentation was not an adverse effect which needed to be taken into account when deciding whether to grant a licence for such experiments. Rather, the statutory scheme governing such licences was concerned with the pain and suffering which animals might experience before death.

Mr Justice Mitting so held, inter alia, in the Queen’s Bench Division on July 27, 2007 when allowing on another ground a claim for judicial review by the claimant, the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, of the letter of the defendant, the Secretary of State for the Home Department, of October 1, 2003 accepting the findings and conclusions in a report of the Chief Inspector of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Inspectorate into nonhuman primate research at Cambridge University and indicating that there were no grounds for further action.

Section 5 of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 provides: “(4) In determining whether and on what terms to grant a project licence the secretary of state shall weigh the likely adverse effects on the animals concerned against the benefit likely to accrue as a result of the programme to be specified in the licence.”

Mr Richard Drabble, QC and Mr Simon Cox for the claimant; Mr Nigel Giffin, QC and Mr Julian Milford for the Home Secretary.

MR JUSTICE MITTING said that the question arose whether death was an adverse effect within the meaning of section 5(4).

The words “adverse effect” were shorthand for “lasting harm” within the meaning of section 2(1) of the Act, by which a regulated procedure under the Act was one which “may have the effect of causing that animal pain, suffering distress or lasting harm”. Death was not lasting harm.

The Act was directed towards the protection of living animals. Death itself could not be an adverse effect within the meaning of section 15(1), which provided that an animal that was suffering or was likely to suffer adverse effects at the end of a series of regulated procedures must immediately be killed by a humane method. The same words had the same meaning in section 5(4).

Solicitors: Mr David Thomas, Holloway; Treasury Solicitor.

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