Fury at animal killing law

Animal rights campaigners have expressed fury that the Government has ignored calls for a ban on the killing of newborn animals by “concussion or blow to the head”.

Such a method might be used as a way of stopping an experiment in order to comply with a pain threshold. It may also be used if a researcher deems normal euthanasia methods such as injection might interfere with test results.

Despite objections from the Irish Anti-Vivisection Society (IAVS), the new methods are approved in EU legislation which was recently signed off by James Reilly, the health minister.