Cruelty to animals continues

The author and campaigner Paula S Owen asks if we can, hand on heart, say we are any more humane to animals today than we were 100 years ago (“How cruel death of a little stray dog led to riots in 1900s Britain”, News, last week). Given that the latest figures suggest that every year in the UK we now experiment on about 3 million laboratory animals, report more than a million cases of animal cruelty against “pets” and produce more than 700 million intensive/factory farmed animals, the answer is surely a resounding “no”.

Tracey Gregory

Hemingford Abbots, Cambridgeshire