MBR Medical Advances: What Marshall Leaves Out

Nobody disputes that animals were used in the discoveries on Marshall’s list. What the list does not tell you is how well the method works now. Around nine in ten drugs that pass preclinical testing, including animal studies, go on to fail in human clinical trials, a figure widely cited by the NIH and the FDA. A meaningful share of those failures are for safety and toxicity, the very thing dog studies are supposed to catch. If animal studies reliably predicted human safety, far fewer drugs would fail for unexpected toxicity in people.

On dogs specifically, a 2014 analysis of dog toxicity studies (Bailey, Thew and Balls, ATLA) concluded that a lack of toxicity in dogs gives little evidence a drug will be safe in people. Beagles are used largely by convention and convenience: they are small, gentle and easy to handle. That is a reason they are bred. It is not a reason they predict human biology.

Dogs are a specially protected species under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986: by law they may be used only where no other species or method is suitable. That is the statute saying dogs are a last resort, not a foundation. In November 2025 the government published “Replacing animals in science”, a strategy to eliminate animal use “in all but exceptional circumstances”, prioritising replacement for specially protected species including dogs, with a £30 million translational models hub and a new UK Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods. Campaigners’ criticism is that it sets no statutory targets and no dog-specific end date. It is not that it is going the wrong way.

Since December 2022 the FDA Modernization Act 2.0 has meant US law no longer requires animal testing before human trials. In April 2025 the FDA announced a plan to phase out animal-testing requirements, starting with monoclonal antibodies, and the NIH has said it will no longer fund new proposals that rely only on animal models. Marshall’s own FAQ concedes the 2022 Act allows non-animal data. When a dog is still used, it is a choice.

In August 2026 White Coat Waste Project traced Marshall dogs and cats to NIH-funded experiments including induced heart failure, pacemaker implantation, circulatory arrest, spinal cord injury and skull drilling, and to obesity and diabetes studies. That is what “pacemakers” looks like from the dog’s side of the list.

MBR Acres in Wyton breeds around 2,000 beagles a year and sells most of them at around sixteen weeks old to contract research organisations, including Charles River, Labcorp and Sequani, for regulatory toxicity testing: dosing to establish how much of a substance it takes to cause harm, after which the dogs are normally killed. During the 2025 to 2026 Crown Court trials the prosecution accepted as agreed fact that a Home Office licence held within Marshall’s UK group permits “harvesting of bio-products from live dogs, or from dogs following humane killing” and terminal blood sampling from which dogs are not permitted to recover. Read the bleeding licence. None of that is on the “medical advances” page.

That is a claim about veterinary medicine as a whole, not about what Marshall sells. The beagles that leave MBR Acres go to contract laboratories testing drugs and chemicals largely for human use. Veterinary medicines can be, and increasingly are, developed through clinical studies in pets who are already ill, with their owners’ consent, in the same way human medicines are trialled in patients. A dog with arthritis in a veterinary trial is a patient. A sixteen-week-old beagle in a toxicology study is a reagent. Loving animals and opposing the second is entirely consistent.

Not since December 2022. The FDA Modernization Act 2.0 removed the requirement for animal testing before human trials, and Marshall’s own FAQ says so, while insisting the Act does not *ban* animal research. Both halves are true, and together they mean every dog used in the US now is used because somebody chose to, not because the law made them.

The Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act does not require dog studies. It permits them, subject to a harm-benefit test and a demonstration that no alternative exists, and treats dogs as a specially protected species. That is a bar to clear, not a mandate. The public’s view is settled: 86% find testing on dogs unacceptable (Ipsos MORI for the UK government, 2018). Petition 736578 passed 121,000 signatures, and at the Westminster Hall debate on 27 April 2026 fourteen MPs from across the main parties called for an end to dog testing.

Campaigners ask for an end to breeding dogs for laboratories, a planned transition, full rehoming, and investment in human-relevant science. On 20 June 2026 we sent MBR Acres, its parent companies, its customers and the Cambridgeshire authorities an open letter proposing a negotiated, peaceful closure, including an offer to buy the remaining dogs, with four weeks for a substantive reply. The deadline passed on 19 July 2026. They did not respond.

The precedent already exists. When Ridglan Farms in Wisconsin, a beagle breeder of similar scale to MBR Acres, agreed to close in 2026, more than 2,000 dogs went to rescue organisations. Medical research did not stop. More than 65 companies have already cut ties with MBR Acres. Progress is not what is being protected here. Supply is.