The debate is over and - thanks to an unusual use of a statutory Instrument (SI) - the Public Order Act 2023 will make peaceful protest against animal testing facilities a criminal offence. 

With this amendment, Sir Keir Starmer's Labour government has further quashed free speech, making it clear that it’s uninterested in public opinion or the horrors animals endure.

The move is as baffling as it is concerning, given the government’s recent commitment to replacing cruel animal testing with animal-free methods. 

Freedom

Where, exactly, along the trajectory toward scientifically superior, humane methods does gagging those speaking up against animal abuse fit? 

This law, which will obscure the public’s already murky view of how the government props up this secretive industry, is entirely at odds with the government’s strategy. 

Unsurprisingly, it has faced fierce opposition within government ranks, with more than two dozen Labour MPs rebelling against the plan, highlighting widespread unease about the amendment’s lack of scrutiny.

There’s a reason this law change has been labelled “sneaky”. While SIs are routinely used to make technical or administrative tweaks to laws, this use represents a major overhaul of protest laws to an extent that many agree warrants a new act of parliament. 

What’s more, the Public Order Act already presents well-documented risks to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, making this sweeping extension of these powers unnecessary. 

Lives

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised this amendment has been 'backdoored'. Experiments on animals are, after all, shrouded in secrecy. 

The Home Office does release an annual report - the latest of which revealed that 2.64 million procedures were conducted on animals in Great Britain in 2024. But animals used for their body parts or trapped in the breeding supply chain are not included in government figures. 

To add to the opacity, inspections – and the details behind serious violations – are not made public. Statistics hide the most painful procedures, and vague terms, such as “humane endpoints”, tell us little about how animals really suffer.

Unknown to most, also, is the lack of sound scientific solutions that experiments on animals deliver. 

Take sepsis research, for example. Sepsis claims the lives of 48,000 British people each year - more than the toll taken by breast, bowel and prostate cancer combined.

Exploited

Yet research continues to rely primarily on mice, even though all sepsis treatments developed using mice have failed in humans. 

Former National Institutes of Health (NIH) director Francis Collins once referred to useless animal studies for sepsis as a “heartbreaking loss of decades of research and billions of dollars”. 

That doesn’t prevent British researchers from deliberately puncturing rodents’ intestines to allow faecal matter to leak out leading to pain, fever, chills, diarrhoea, laboured breathing, and organ failure.

Mice are the most commonly exploited animals, but testing facilities are full of cows, dogs, horses, fish, birds and more. In 2024 alone, experimenters drugged monkeys with ketamine and forced them to inhale mist laced with tuberculosis, fatally poisoned fish with toxic chemicals, and hacked out pieces of rabbits’ leg bones. 

Laboratories

If what we’re privy to is reminiscent of a horror film, surely it demands, peaceful protest.

The government says it will leave the bar for prosecuting protesters to the police and the Crown Prosecution Service, creating unacceptable uncertainty. No one really knows which actions will be deemed as 'criminal campaigning' or not. This ambiguity that undermines the right to free speech.

Any protest activity, including online actions, that is judged to cause significant delay or interference to the life sciences sector could result in a 12-month prison sentence or an unlimited fine. 

In practice, it would insulate breeding facilities, testing laboratories, universities, pharmaceutical companies, and their suppliers from public protest or lobbying.

Cruel

The right to protest is imperative, and the right to do so on behalf of animals is even more critical. After all, animals cannot speak out,  blow whistles, or resist abuse themselves. 

They rely on informed humans to highlight the obfuscated violence they face in research settings – especially given that public access to information is significantly limited under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act.

Of course, we at PETA are disappointed and confounded by this move to limit animal liberation advocates, but we won’t be silenced. 

Peaceful protest has a long and proud history as a democratic tool for ending the cruel abuses of animals, and it will remain a vital part of our arsenal. We urge anyone who wants to join the fight to sign up for our Action Team.

This Author

Dr Julia Baines is head of science policy at people for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).