Victory for macaques in Italy!

The Italian Council of State (Consiglio di Stato, the Supreme Court of Administrative Law in Italy), supporting LAV's complaint, overturned a previous judgment by the Lazio Regional Administrative Court. He pronounces the end of an infamous experiment which the universities of Turin and Parma were about to perform on six macaques. The animals were to be made blind (before being euthanized) for the purposes of research into a specific vision disorder called "blind vision". According to the State Council, the Ministry of Health has not been able to prove that there is no alternative to invasive surgeries carried out on the brains of macaques. According to the judges, researchers have a duty to demonstrate that the suffering their experiments can cause animals is inevitable, and that the "use" of the latter for scientific purposes is the only way to carry out research. The same duty falls on the Ministry of Health, which authorizes this research.

By comparing the various rights and interests involved (animal rights on the one hand, freedom of science and research on the other), the State Council decided that the protection and safeguarding of animals must prevail. The court also ordered the ministry and the universities to reimburse LAV 3,000 euros for its legal costs.

A few days before the court hearing, the ministry ordered an inspection of the laboratories belonging to the University of Parma to show that the conditions in which the macaques were held were optimal. However, the report following this visit was clearly incomplete and contained many gaps. It did not take into account several animal welfare parameters such as light, noise, exercise, burrowing, handling and cognitive activities appropriate to the species.

This judgment represents a real breakthrough in relation to the vagueness maintained around this project in order to camouflage its absence of prerequisites and its inconsistencies.

Now, with our help and citizen mobilization, the LAV, which since last summer has been leading the #civediamoliberi campaign accompanied by a petition signed by some 425,300 people, urges the Minister of Health Roberto Speranza to revoke the authorization of experimentation and freeing the macaques. These animals were captured in the desert, brought to China and from there sent to Europe, forced to live in cages for the so-called needs of an experiment that was already conducted in the past and which turned out to be devoid of any benefit to patients.

Moreover, a few days earlier the European Commission responding to a question on Horizon 2020 funds and the Animal Protection Directive, said that scientific projects like this can only be funded on the basis of existing national authorizations - which is not the case for the University of Turin...

said Gianluca Felicetti, president of LAV.

Muriel Arnal, president and founder of One Voice adds: