Experiments in South Australia
| Stock animals (chickens, sheep, cattle, pigs,) | 42,689 |
| Laboratory animals (mice, rats, rabbits, guinea pigs,) | 22,773 |
| Native animals | 5,167 |
| Aquatic animals (amphibians, fish, crustaceans) | 3,292 |
| Birds | 1,681 |
| Reptiles | 1,058 |
| Domestic animals (dogs, cats, etc) | 456 |
| Other exotic animals | 109 |
| Primates | 24 |
| Total all species | 77,407 |
General purpose of experiments in 1995/6
| Biology | 9,773 |
| Health and Welfare | 11,143 |
| Animal Production | 24,578 |
| Education | 31,152 |
| Environment | 752 |
| Total | 77,407 |
What these categories mean:
- Biology: investigating any aspect of human or animal biology, which may or may not have practical applications;
- Health and welfare: maintaining human or animal health through the study of diseases, treatments, toxin testing, and so on.
- Animal Production: improving the production of farm animals, for example, through nutrition studies to make them grow faster;
- Education: ranging from classroom pets, to dissections, to teaching farming techniques such as mulesing, castration, etc;
- Environment: population surveys of animals, killing animals for museum display.
| Observation with minor interference | 40,914 |
| Unconscious or dead during study | 9,397 |
| Minor conscious procedure | 14,582 |
| Minor surgery, GA with recovery | 9,794 |
| Major surgery, GA with recovery | 1,127 |
| Minor physiological intervention | 1,201 |
| Major physiological intervention | 712 |
| Total | 77,407 |
What these categories mean:
- Observation with minor interference: includes classroom pets, observation of normal social behaviours, minor dietary or environmental manipulations.
- Unconscious or dead during study: includes animals killed for tissues or for dissection, and animals operated on under general anaesthetic and then given an overdose.
- Minor conscious intervention: includes procedures such as injections and blood sampling.
- Minor surgery, GA with recovery: small operations are performed under general anaesthetic, such as taking samples of tissues for biopsies or inserting cannulas.
- Major surgery, GA with recovery: includes operations on the bones, abdomen or chest under general anaesthetic, and may involve post-operative pain.
- Minor physiological challenge: includes minor infections, the early stages of cancer, and arthritis with pain relief.
- Major physiological challenge: includes major infection, genetic deformity, late stages of cancer, arthritis without pain relief, lengthy isolation or environmental deprivation. This is obviously the most severe category.
Even if experiments are relatively harmless, the animals are killed when they are no longer needed. Also some animals are kept in cramped and bare laboratory housing, where they can't carry out their natural behaviour. These points have to be kept in mind when assessing the harm caused by experiments.
Go back to Species and types of experiments in NSW and Vic