A Scottish animal welfare charity has admitted owning shares in a company that carried out animal testing.

The Scottish SPCA said it owns shares worth £600,000 in Shell, a company that was involved in laboratory experiments on 100,000 animals in 2015. However, the charity said a lot of its Shell shares were donated by supporters.

The issue was raised with the charity after journalists discovered references to Shell in its previous annual accounts.

The charity, which reportedly bought shares from Royal Dutch Shell in 2005, told BBC Scotland it had a responsibility to generate the 'best returns possible' but would review all of its investments at the end of February.

However, it declined to confirm what it intended to do with the Shell shares.

Conservative MSP Annie Wells has now called on the charity to sell the shares.

Shell was fined after leaking more than 200 tonnes of oil into the North Sea in 2011.

Scottish SPCA Chief Superintendent Mike Flynn said: "The Scottish SPCA has a number of business investments, managed by professional investment managers on our behalf, in line with many other charitable organisations across the UK.

"We can confirm that we have not purchased shares in Shell for over 12 years.

"Any investments purchased since 2005 have been in line with the Society's ethics and principles which are emphasised to our investment managers.

"The majority of the shares we currently hold in Shell were donated or left to us by supporters in their Wills in order for the Society to generate future income.

"It is our responsibility to generate the best returns available to help fund the Society's mission to rescue and rehome abused, abandoned and neglected animals in Scotland.

We will be reviewing our current investment portfolio, as per standard practice, in the next few weeks."