When Animal Testing Becomes “National Infrastructure”

In December 2025, the UK Government took a step that fundamentally alters the future of animals in laboratories, and it passed largely unnoticed by the public.

During a parliamentary debate on amendments to the Public Order Act 2023, the Government proposed that animal testing and breeding facilities be designated as “key national infrastructure.” This classification places animal laboratories alongside energy grids, water supplies, and transport networks — systems deemed essential to national security and national resilience.

For animals, this is not a neutral legal change.
It is a sign of danger.

If animal testing were genuinely being phased out, it would not be embedded into national infrastructure law, criminally protected or require expanded police powers to shield it from any form of challenge.

Designating animal testing facilities as national infrastructure tells us something the Government’s replacement strategy does not: animal testing is being locked in, not wound down.

Animal lovers often ask why animal testing persists when modern, animal-free science already exists.? This legislative move makes the answer clearer than ever. When a system that causes harm is protected at the level of national security, it is not on its way out.
It is purposely being preserved. A system that is truly temporary does not require permanent legal protection.

Designating animal testing facilities as national infrastructure does not merely protect buildings or equipment. It protects the entire system that sustains animal testing, and that system begins with breeding. Animal testing cannot exist without breeding. Every experiment relies on a constant pipeline of animals produced specifically for laboratory use. This is where animal suffering begins, long before any experiment takes place. Animals are produced at scale, confined, subjected to torturous procedures, and slaughtered to sustain the system — including millions classified as “surplus” and killed simply because they do not meet experimental requirements or are no longer needed.

By extending national infrastructure protections to animal suppliers and breeding facilities, the Government is not safeguarding a practice on its way out. It is safeguarding the future supply of animals into laboratories. When breeding facilities are legally shielded, urgency disappears. Pressure to end animal testing weakens. The incentive to invest in genuinely animal-free science diminishes. 

For animals, this decision signals one thing above all else: the system responsible for their suffering is being reinforced, not dismantled.

In the same December debate, the Government sought to reassure Parliament. MPs were told that a recently published strategy sets out a vision for a world in which the use of animals in science is eliminated in all but exceptional circumstances, and that the Government is “absolutely committed” to that goal while simultaneously asserting its duty to protect national health infrastructure and resilience.

This is where the contradiction becomes impossible to ignore. Why is animal testing being treated as something too important to disrupt if it is truly being phased out?

As set out in Medicine Without Cruelty’s analysis of the UK replacement strategy, the policy does not commit to ending animal testing. It redefines “replacement” to include reduction and refinement, approaches that leave animal use fundamentally intact. Animals continue to be bred, experimented on, and killed under the language of progress.

The strategy avoids the area where most animals are used, particularly basic “curiosity-driven” research in academic laboratories. It introduces no binding targets, no legal obligations, and no enforceable timelines to remove animals from the system. Breeding colonies remain untouched. The pipeline of animals into laboratories continues. What is presented as a vision of elimination is, in practice, a framework for delay.

When delay is paired with the criminal protection of animal testing infrastructure, the message is clear. Animals are not being transitioned out of science. They are being written into its future.

The designation of animal testing as national infrastructure does not reduce suffering; it guarantees its continuation.

A genuine replacement strategy would dismantle breeding pipelines immediately, remove animals from research, and impose binding deadlines for their elimination. Instead, the UK has chosen to shield the system from challenge while asking the public to trust that change will come later.

For animals, “later” has a cost.

Animal testing is not being phased out.
It is being protected.