Testing Times II

Last November there was a threat by the EU to backtrack on the pledge to ban the selling of animal-tested products in Europe, which is due to come in force in 2013. Thanks to the efforts of people such as Uncaged in publicising the attempted U turn, there has been enough of a public outcry to at least make the EU think again, though I wouldn’t trust those bastards at the EU to run me a bath, let alone do anything so important as implementing an EU wide ban on animal tested products

But just as one threat is potentially deflected, another has reared its ugly head. The prospect that British animal experimentation laws may be explicitly weakened for the first time since the days of Queen Victoria.

A separate EU law, this time governing how all animal experimentation across Europe will be regulated, has been finalised, Now, each member country has to update their own domestic legislation to make it consistent with the new European Law. As with all EU directives, if implemented here, it could have a mixed effect, and may, in some cases, even make things worse. Up til now, the UK government has pledged that it will keep our domestic legislation stricter than the EU requires, but it now emerges that the government is preparing to rip up the rules that give animals at least some protection from the very worst cruelty.

Because time is short, and I want to get this up on the blog quickly, I am doing a straight cut and paste from Uncaged’s site:

Government threatens to cut protection for animals in laboratories
British animal experimentation laws may be explicitly weakened for the first time since Queen Victoria’s day

A new EU Directive (2010/63/EU) to govern animal experimentation across Europe was finalised last autumn. Now, each country has to update their own laws so they are consistent with the new European Directive. In some areas this could reduce animal suffering in British laboratories, but in other ways it may make things worse.
Up until now, the UK Government has assured Parliament and the public that they will keep any British rules that are stricter than the EU Directive. However, we have discovered that the Government is now prepared to rip up measures that give animals at least some protection from the very worst cruelty.

In other words, the Government is prepared to sacrifice British sovereignty and the lives of innocent animals to serve the interests of big business. This could have terrible consequences:

• More primates could be imprisoned and killed in research for trivial conditions such as baldness, hangovers, mild allergies or the common cold.
• Secret proposals to conduct chemical poisoning tests on dogs would be approved without public knowledge.
• The Government could start allowing researchers to inflict excruciating injuries on animals such as head trauma, burns or infected fractures without pain relief.
• Abandoned and stray cats and dogs could end up in vivisection labs once again, over a 100 years after the practice was banned in Britain. This could open the door to companion animals being stolen by animal dealers and sold to labs.
• It will be easier for researchers to repeatedly starve, mutilate, stress, poison and give cancer to the same individual animal.
• The Government could give the animal testing industry carte blanche to abuse animals with impunity, free from independent oversight.
• Animal research establishments will no longer have to even consider whether the pain they inflict on animals is justified by the expected test results.

The impact of these changes would be devastating – more pain, more suffering, more distress and more killing. Human health will also suffer as there will be even less incentive for researchers to replace crude animal tests with more effective and reliable non-animal methods.

The Government is hoping to push these appalling measures through by exploiting a loophole which allows them to change UK laws without Parliamentary scrutiny.

This is a major battle which will affect the fate of animals and medical research for years to come. Please stand up for animals at this pivotal time.