A Day of Attention: On Commemoration and Animal Testing

April 24 marks World Day for Laboratory Animals. Established in 1979 by the National Anti-Vivisection Society, it is celebrated annually with marches and events around the world that call for something both simple and difficult: that we confront a practice that many would prefer to ignore.

(Image source: World Day for Laboratory Animals).

The number of animals used in testing worldwide is often estimated to be between 100 and 200 million per year, although it is difficult to determine reliable figures. Compared to the vastly higher numbers of animals raised for food, this figure may seem relatively modest. Yet, animal testing has long evoked a particular sense of unease, even revulsion. The recent undercover investigation by the Humane Society in the United States into animal suffering in a toxicology laboratory is just one example of labs experimenting on animals.  It is not just the scale that disturbs people, but the nature of what is being done: pain, suffering, and death deliberately inflicted, in controlled settings, for human purposes.

This unease is nothing new. Observers have always been repulsed by the sight and the very idea of dissecting live animals, and campaigns against vivisection are among the longest-running. There is something deeply disturbing about the intentionality involved: the planning, the justification, the definition of living beings as tools. And beyond that, the invisible margins: animals bred for research that are never used and are killed as “surplus.” These details are often abstracted into statistics, but they resist abstraction when we look closely at them rather than looking away.

At the same time, the debate over animal testing is not straightforward and has rarely been peaceful. It is marked by sharp disagreements, which sometimes escalate into hostility on both sides. Proponents highlight the medical and scientific advances that have been based, at least in part, on animal models; critics respond with both ethical and scientific concerns, questioning not only the morality of the practice but also its reliability. This can be summed up in a quote from Thomas Hartung, who featured in Season 5 of The Animal Turn:

“We cannot deny that there was medical progress with the best and only tool we had at hand, but we are not seventy kilogram rats.”

Today we have other tools “at hand,” alternatives now exist, at least in part: advances in cell and tissue research, “organs-on-a-chip,” computer modeling, artificial intelligence, and carefully regulated studies conducted on human volunteers suggest that a different path is possible. These approaches are often presented as the future of science: more accurate, more humane, and, ultimately, more relevant to human biology – yet progress feels slow. Although these alternatives are often discussed and sometimes celebrated, they remain underfunded and implemented unevenly. The infrastructure, habits, and regulatory frameworks built around animal experimentation are difficult to change. Even where there is the will, there is inertia.

"Most of the animal tests which we are still using have been introduced when I was not yet born or in kindergarten. There has been a rough estimate that every seven years we double our knowledge in the life sciences. So we have now more than a hundred thousand times knowledge than we had when we introduced these animal tests. So there must be something in the box. There's no area of science where we continue doing the same experiment for sixty years, sometimes even eighty years" - Thomas Hartung on The Animal Turn

So, ultimately, World Day for Laboratory Animals is not simply a day of protest, nor is it a day dedicated to promoting new technologies. It is, perhaps more than anything else, a day of commemoration. A day to resist the urge to look away, to acknowledge the lives that largely unfold in the shadows within laboratory systems. To live with the discomfort, even if only briefly, rather than glossing over it with easy answers.

If the future of science is to become animal-free, this will not happen automatically. It will require constant attention, funding, and the willingness to challenge long-established practices. Commemoration alone does not change systems, but it still serves a purpose: it reminds us not to become indifferent. It keeps the issue visible, even when it is uncomfortable to do so. Perhaps this is what this day asks for most of all: attention – and, from that, the possibility, however slow, of change.

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Carlo Salzani is a research fellow at the Messerli Research Institute in Vienna, Austria, where he leads the project “Animal Suffering and the Politics of Shame,” funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). He is also a member and co-founder of the Vienna Animal Studies Group. His latest book, Animals, Empathy, and Anthropomorphism: The Limits of Imagination, was published in open access by Palgrave Macmillan in 2025.