Challenging Subjects: Sentience and the Legal Status of Research Animals in the UK by Carley Lightfoot

This seminar has now concluded but it is available on demand here. 

This seminar is hosted by the School of Law, Social & Criminal Justice Research Seminar Series. Our series offers exciting insights into ongoing research projects within the law school and conducted by our external research partners. We often feature work from our research centres. Join us for invigorating discussion! 

In this session, we hear from Carley. Carley is a Lecturer in Law at Birmingham City University. She is currently in the final year of her PhD, researching into the effectiveness of animal experimentation legislation in the UK. Carley specialises in animal law predominantly, but also has expertise in Criminal Law, Human Rights/ESC Rights and Medical Law. 

In this session, Carley will give the following presentation, followed by an interactive Q&A: 

Challenging Subjects: Sentience and the Legal Status of Research Animals in the UK

According to statistics from the Home Office, in 2019, 3.40 million experiments were performed on animals in the UK. Of these experiments, 102,600 were classified as being ‘severe’, meaning that the animals used would be likely to experience severe pain, suffering, or distress due to the experimentation procedures. With such a concerningly high number of experiments being conducted on animals each year, it begs the question: how effective is the legislation in protecting animal welfare, ensuring that scientific experiments using animals can be justified and upholding the high legal and ethical standards reflected in the statute? 

If you have any questions, contact Mitchell Longan, the Research Seminar Series leader, at mitchell.longan@bcu.ac.uk.