Beagle Testing | Naturewatch Foundation

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In 2024, 2,646 regulated experiments were carried out on dogs in Britain. Of those, 2,488 were on beagles.

In 2024, 2,646 regulated experiments were carried out on dogs in Great Britain. Of these, 2,488 involved beagle testing with 1,549 beagles bred specifically for this purpose in the UK. All of these experiments were approved by the UK Government.

Dogs are inquisitive, intelligent, and deeply social animals. While they may spend much of the day resting, they thrive in rich, stimulating environments, full of companionship and play. This is something anyone who shares their life with a dog knows instinctively.

Beagles are no exception. In fact, they’re known for being affectionate, curious and energetic, needing at least 1.5 hours of exercise each day. These very qualities, which make them wonderful companions, are also what make laboratory and breeding kennel environments profoundly unsuitable for them.

Yet, behind closed doors, this is the reality for thousands of beagles in the UK who are bred and used for science.

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• • Animal experiments in the UK
• What are animal experiments?
• Experiments on beagles
• Non-animal methods research
• Household products
• The ‘Secrecy Clause’
• • What we’re doing
• The Forgotten Animals in Labs
• • What you can do

A Tail of Two Dogs

Meet Toby and ’43’: two beagles with two very different lives.

We’ve teamed up with Fire Lily Studio to create a powerful short film showing the stark contrast between the life of Toby, a cherished companion, and that of a nameless dog held for testing in a laboratory, tagged as ’43’.

Click on the play button to watch the film and see the heartbreaking difference in their stories.

Can you help us?

Many people still believe that beagle testing is a thing of the past. It is not. It happens day in day out, right here in the UK – maybe just a few miles from you.

Our 2026 grant to fund a project or research piece on suitable alternative methods to animal testing runs alongside Tail of Two Dogs, and we’d love your help. Let’s fund a future where every animal matters, and together we can take a stand against animal experiments.

Your donations go directly towards our work advancing animal welfare, including changing the story for animals like ’43’.

Please, for Toby and 43, share our short film and donate where you can.

Help spread the word

We’re proud to announce that A Tail of Two Dogs has been nominated for the Smiley Charity Film Awards 2025! Your vote can make a real difference.

Please take a moment to cast your vote for A Tail of Two Dogs in the Smiley Awards today and help us bring this vital message to more people.

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Why is beagle testing so common?

Tragically, the beagle is the most popular breed of dog for tests because they’re small and, once trained, can be very docile, so they’re easy to manage. Researchers consider dogs highly suitable for toxicity testing (which is basically seeing what happens to an animal when they’re poisoned).

To test each dog, doses of chemicals are either force-fed through a tube directly into the stomach or injected. Many of these tests require repeated testing, with some dogs receiving doses every day, often without pain relief.

Assessing the results involves autopsy, so even if the animal survives being poisoned, they’ll be killed. One CFI investigation from 2013 found that puppies as young as 5 weeks old were being killed, shockingly, within a laboratory conducting research into veterinary medicines.

What kind of lives do beagles have in laboratories?

The Home Office sets out requirements for managing dogs in laboratories in its Code of Practice for breeding and housing.

The Code of Practice’s recommendations include:

• Provision of cages with between 0.5 and 2.25 square metres of floor space, depending on each dog’s weight.
• Lighting controls to simulate day and night cycles.
• Dogs should ‘where possible be provided with outdoor runs’ (a requirement under EU animal welfare directives).

Although these requirements have been set out to ensure the welfare of the dogs, housing consisting of cages and concrete exercise spaces cannot compare to the fulfilment and enrichment that a companion beagle would experience in a family home.

Whistleblowers and activists who have witnessed dogs in breeding kennels and laboratories have said that they show signs of stereotypical behaviours, such as pacing, and that they are desperate for attention and affection, which they rarely, if ever, receive. Any affection that the dogs do receive will be confusing to them, when interspersed with testing.

Beagles and British Laboratories

Most of the beagles used in experiments in British laboratories are bred in the UK, but laboratories are hungry for more. That’s why in 2015, Yorkshire Evergreen, part of the US Marshall Bioresources group of companies, were able to establish a new breeding facility for 200 beagles at any one time near Hull, despite public protests and celebrity outrage.

UK laboratories also import beagles for testing. According to Home Office statistics, since 2015, nearly 16,000 beagles used in British experiments were born in the UK at licensed breeding centres, over 600 born in the EU, and nearly 7,500 born elsewhere in the world and imported to the UK.

The strength of feeling against the use of dogs in laboratories has been clear in recent years, with petitions against their use receiving hundreds of thousands of signatures.

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Shhh, you’ve been silenced!

Protesting outside animal-testing facilities could soon result in arrest and up to 12 months in prison. The UK Government is close to adding ‘Life Sciences infrastructure’ – essentially animal testing – to the Public Order Act 2023. Act now: urge your MP to challenge this change and protect our right to protest before it’s too late.

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The Forgotten Animals in Britain's Laboratories

Each year, millions of animals in Britain are bred for scientific research, but many are never used in experiments. The true number of these forgotten animals and their fate remain unrecorded by the UK government.

Let’s change this. Email your MP and urge them to stand up for these forgotten victims.

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