Thousands of alternatives to harmful animal use are now available. Why, then, are well over 100,000 animals used annually for educational purposes, within the EU alone? To find the answers, we studied the publicly available summaries of scientific and educational animal use in EU member states. The most common reasons provided by educators for not using humane alternatives, were: 1) the perceived ‘necessity’ of using a living animal for ‘proper’ learning, and 2) a belief that alternative were not adequate. However, these personal beliefs of some educators, conflict with the best available evidence in this field, which come from published systematic reviews of the educational effectiveness of humane alternatives. Our published study on European educational animal use, and our recent systematic review of the educational efficacy of humane alternatives, are both at
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