Animal research is essential for understanding the mechanisms at work in the whole living body, and no alternative can provide complete and reliable information in this field. Ethics and the law forbid testing a new drug or medical treatment on humans before it has been tested on laboratory animals. However, animal experiments make up only about a third of biomedical research; another third is medical research in humans, and the remaining third includes alternatives such as tissue and organ cultures, biochemical methods, computer simulations and lower organisms.
About 96% of the animals that are killed are used for food, 0.4% are put down in animal welfare shelters, while only 0.03% of animals are used for research. This research is essential for understanding how the animal world works, which forms the basis of the knowledge needed to prevent diseases, produce medicines, medical devices and treatments, and protect the environment and the wealth of plants and animals in it.
Of the animals used for research in Israel, more than 85% are rodents (many millions of which are exterminated in agriculture), while only about a hundredth of a percent are monkeys.
Israel imports about 30,000–40,000 animals for research purposes and exports about 4,000 animals a year.