by Nick Kolyohin
JERUSALEM, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Israeli activists for animal rights are demanding a fundamental change in the regulation of the animal tests in Israel.
In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of animals used for experiments by 50 authorized companies, universities, and research centers, according to the activists.
"Until 2016, the average number of victims (animals) in labs was around 300,000 per year. In 2016, the number went up to 517,000," said Oren Ben-Yosef, CEO of the Israeli Society for the Abolition of Vivisection.
"In 2017, the number doubled to over 1 million victims," added Ben-Yosef. The activists are worried about the further growth.
Israel has a leading number of non-meat eaters around the world, with around 15 percent of the population are vegetarians or vegans.
In Israel, any issue involving animal suffering is controversial. There are constant protests around the country calling for stopping animal suffering.
On the other hand, Israel is also a growing global center of cutting-edge technologies in life science. Some researches and experiments demand tests on animals.
The exact data about these experiments have been a secrecy. Jacob Gopas, head of the National Agency of Ethics in Animal Experimentation (IACUC) at the Israeli Ministry of Health, said that the reason for secrecy is to protect patents, knowledge, and researchers.
"It is concerned that the activists for animal rights will cross the line and harm scientists and researchers because of their tests on animals," said Gopas.
However, the activists believed there are other reasons for the secrecy.
Over the years, Israeli activists for animal rights succeeded a few times to secretly record the experiments on animals in major Israeli universities.
The footages were broadcasted and published on main Israeli news media, and it shocked the public. After that, the animal test industry shifted to act much more secretly behind a well-closed door.
Gopas stands in the head of the governmental agency IACUC that is in charge of regulating and managing the way experiments on animals are done in Israel.
Most of the IACUC members do not find it a problem to do tests on animals. From their perspective, it is a crucial practice to advance science, improve the medicine and promote biomedical knowledge, said Gopas.
Nevertheless, Gopas believes that animals' suffering is sometimes more important than the tests on them.
There was an experiment that demands to crack the head of an animal without painkillers "to find ways of treating head trauma, and we didn't approve it," said Gopas.
Moreover, Gopas opposes using the same animal for more than one test because of ethical and moral reasons.
The IACUC is working on examining non-animal alternatives to each test and ways to reduce the suffering of the animals.
There are more to be done, according to Andre Menache, a former worker of IACUC.
The idea itself of whether the animal tests are necessary for the progress of science or medicine is not discussed during the meetings of IACUC, according to Menache.
Activists said that another main problem is that the IACUC itself has the conflict of interests, as many members are researchers and they are doing experiments on animals.
"The IACUC's dominant members are doing themselves experiments on animals because they are researchers in their profession," said Anat Refua, a well-known activist against the experiments on animals.
"The other members of IACUC are governmental representatives with no interest in the issue at all, and animal rights activists have only three sits in the committee," added Refua.
The Israeli Association for Ethical Science (AES) tries to change from the inside of how the system works by legal means.
AES approached the Israeli court to order the state to disclose the names of the committees' members who can approve the requests for animal experiments.
"The members of the committees approve experiments for the institutions and companies they are working in," said Gilad Heller, legal advisor of AES.
