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One Voice & ECEAE satisfied with EU court ruling in landmark cosmetics testing case

One Voice & ECEAE satisfied with EU court ruling in landmark cosmetics testing case

One Voice & ECEAE satisfied with EU court ruling in landmark cosmetics testing case
29.09.2016
One Voice & ECEAE satisfied with EU court ruling in landmark cosmetics testing case
Domestic animals

One Voice and the European Coalition to End Animal Experiments (ECEAE) have welcomed a decision made today by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to reject an argument by the European Federation for Cosmetics Ingredients (EFCI). This would have enabled companies to evade the cosmetics animal testing and sale bans by testing on animals under other European or overseas legislation, before using the data to access the EU cosmetics market. The organisations are now urging national regulators to ensure the ruling is enforced effectively across the EU.

Wednesday 21st September

The case was brought last year by EFCI, which represents most cosmetics ingredients manufacturers in Europe [1]. The Federation, backed by the French Government, argued that cosmetics companies should be able to sell in the EU cosmetics containing ingredients tested on animals – as long as the tests were nominally carried out under some legislation other than the EU Cosmetics Regulation.

However, the CJEU has today agreed with an advisory ruling by the Advocate-General in March 2016 proposing that the Court reject the industry’s argument and find that a company cannot rely on animal test data, wherever generated and for whatever purpose, to support the safety of a cosmetics product [2]. The Court also rejected arguments by the UK Government and the European Commission which would also have significantly weakened the animal test bans.

In December 2015 Cruelty Free International, along with the ECEAE, the coalition of animal protection groups it leads, presented arguments at the Court against the cosmetics industry’s attempts to water down the historic ban on cosmetics testing. The ECJ has today make it harder for companies to sell cosmetics in the UK and EU if they have been animal tested elsewhere in the world [3].

Michelle Thew, Chief Executive of Cruelty Free International and ECEAE said: « We are very pleased that EFCI’s attempt to circumnavigate the ban has today been roundly rejected by the Court. This is a victory both for common sense, and for the public who passionately back the landmark animal testing ban. We urge national regulators to stay vigilant and ensure that the cosmetics ban is upheld to prevent the suffering and death of animals, as the Court has signalled. »

Muriel Arnal, president of One Voice
, declared: « This attempt by the EFfCI once again demonstrates the importance of remaining vigilant, even more so in France where the government has again clearly revealed its position. The decision taken by the court is a genuine ethical victory. Animal suffering doesn’t mean a lot to certain manufacturers, irrespective of scientific advances. Today real justice has been upheld, and it’s a good omen for the future. »

Companies have previously sought to use animal testing under other EU legislation, such as the chemical safety programme REACH, to help market cosmetics in the EU, undermining the spirit of the cosmetic testing ban. EFCI attempted to narrow the ban only to apply to cases where the animal testing was specifically carried out with the Cosmetics Regulation in mind (which would be virtually no tests).

NOTES TO EDITOR

[1] The case was brought by the European Federation for Cosmetic Ingredients (EFCI), technically against the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills in the UK. The case was referred to the European Court of Justice by the High Court in London and affects the interpretation throughout the European Union. Cruelty Free International and the ECEAE were the only NGOs accepted as official participants in the case. The recommendations of the Advocate General are not binding on the Court, but are accepted in the majority of cases.

[2]
http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=183602&pageIndex=0&doclang=en&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=641808
[3] Whether to continue the cosmetics animal testing and marketing bans post-Brexit will be one of many questions facing the UK Government. For the moment the UK is bound by this ruling.

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Big protest against hunting on Saturday 1st October

Big protest against hunting on Saturday 1st October

Big protest against hunting on Saturday 1st October
28.09.2016
Big protest against hunting on Saturday 1st October
Wildlife

September 28th 2016

The French are fed up with hunting. The survey* conducted by One Voice inpartnership with ASPAS has just recently shown that 78% of Frenchpeople want to ban hunting on Sundays for obvious safety reasons. 91%of French people want a hunting reform.

Yetthe public authorities are strangely deaf to this strong expectationof our fellow citizens. And our politicians even more.

LaurentWauquiez, President of the “Republicans” of theAuvergne-Rhône-Alpes, has just offered some 3 million euros tohunters in its region to restore their hunting huts or to intervene in our schools to “train” our children in a certain idea of biodiversity…

The President of the Republic has killed it in the bud the long-awaited National Agency for Biodiversity, by not including in it the National Office of Hunting and Wildlife. This public establishment and its 1200 officials remain in the hands of the hunters who are in the majority on its board of directors.

To denounce this, but also the death of 30 million animals each year for a “Past Time” from another age, the Collective of September 21st which brings together 78 associations (joined by Sea Shepherd, the Foundation Brigitte Bardot and One Voice), organizes a large demonstration to end hunting and trapping.

October 1st from 10 am to 1 pm, Place Joachim-du-Bellay (Paris 1st)

Numerous association stands and catering on site

After the demonstration a Kate Amiguet’s film, Hunter- killer – imposter?

will be screened at the Jean Dame cinema at 2:30 p.m. (entrance at 2:00 p.m.)

It will be followed by a debate with the director, Gérard Charollois (president of the CVN, author of the book On Ending the Hunt) and Pierre Athanaze (president of Action Nature, author of the Black Book of Hunting).

List of associations from the collective of September 21st:

269 LIFE FRANCE, Acta Anti speciesism (or Acta Gironde), Embassy for Pigeons, Action Nature Rewilding France, AEC, Animal Cross, AEP,
Animalsace, Animalibre, APIE (Environmental Protection and Initiation Association), Association of the Animal Collective of 06, Association Protection of Château de Flée, AVES France, AVF (Association Vegetarian of France), AVRE, Bio Living in Brie, Brouillard
Définitif, CAUSA, C’est Assez, C’Topoil, CCE2A (Collective Against Animal Experimentation and Exploitation), CHAMADE (Animal Theaters and Mediation), C.H.A.N.T (for Harmonious Cohabitation with other Animals and Nature on Earth), CNPA (Collective Nantais For the
Animals), Collectif Société Anti-Fourrure, Combactive, CHÂTEAU de FLÉE, Monument historique, C.RÉ.DO. Pigeons et Protection Animale, CREL (Recognition and Self Help Club with Greyhounds), CVAAD, CVN  (Convention Life and Nature), DDA (Animal Rights), Droit des Animaux Sud, Dignité Animale, Entre Chiens et Loups, Groupe d’Actions Animales Moselle, Guadeloupe Animaux, F.G.N. (fairy gardians of
nature), GREEN, Humanimo, INFO VÉGANE, Initiatives Terre, Jack et Jessie Protection Animale, la fondation M.A.R.T. (Movement for the
animals and respect of the land), La Griffe, La Voie de l’Hirondelle, La Tribu de Sapeur, L’arche de Valudo, Le Klan du Loup, Les Désobéissants, L214, Laissons Leur Peau Aux Animaux (LLPAA), Les compagnons de Freya, Ligue Universelle pour la Nature et les Animaux, Les 3A, Les Crins Verts, Liberté Égalité Animale 49, Matoucœur, MFP (French mission for the protection of monkeys), Mouvement pour la Cause Animale, Oïkos Kaï Bios, Oiseaux Nature, Patacha, Point Info Loup Lynx, RAC (RAssemblement pour une France sans Chasse), Protection Faune Sauvage Sedan, RAN (Respect of animals and for Nature), Respectons, Initiatives Terre, Refuge « Ame’Ni’Maux », Refuge
« Amis des Bêtes », Sauvetage et Chats en Détresse, Secourisme Animalier, SSA49, SVPA (Société Vosgienne de Protection Animale), Stop Souffrances Animales 49, Vigilance Citoyenne pour le Pâtis, Wolf Eyes Asbl.

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Dolphin Production?

Dolphin Production?

Dolphin Production?
Dolphin Production?
Exploitation for shows

The French are afraid of hunting

The French are afraid of hunting

The French are afraid of hunting
19.09.2016
The French are afraid of hunting
Wildlife

The majority of French people do not feel safe in the countryside during hunting season, as evidenced by this recent IFOP poll for ASPAS and One Voice (1), from 12th to 14th September 2016. It confirms that 8 out of 10 French people want to see Sunday become a non-hunting day, and reveals that 9 out of 10 are in favour of a reform of the organization and regulation of hunting.

A Sunday without hunting? The question does not divide! 78% of the respondents are in favour (compared to 54% in 2009 (2)). This demand is not driven by “urban ecological woes” so vilified by the hunting world, but by 76% of the population living in rural areas.

Hunting accidents remain a taboo subject in France. Yet no other recreational activity than hunting poses such a public safety problem. This weekend in Loire-Atlantique, a woman took a boar bullet in her thigh while she was gardening. An accident that occurred during the opening of the game hunting season which did not begin until the next day in this department! Of the 71% of French people who regularly frequent
the countryside (several times a month), 61% do not feel safe when they go out during the hunting season. Last year, nearly 2 out of 10 victims were not hunters. The death of Samuel (20 years old) in Isère, then that of Gaël (43 years old) in Haute-Savoie had once again underlined the difficult cohabitation of hunting with all the other outdoor activities.

Since 1982, there is no longer a perimeter of security around homes (3). In 2003, the obligation of a national day without hunting per week was abolished by Roselyne Bachelot. There is no regular evaluation of the knowledge or physical abilities of hunters, nor is there any alcohol tests during hunting: a laxity that the majority of French people find unjustifiable.

It is not surprising that today, 91% of our fellow citizens are in favour of a reform of the organization and regulation of hunting to
adapt it to today’s society!

For more than 20 years, ASPAS have been asking governments to take a simple and democratic step in sharing the space between a small million hunters and the majority of the population: the truce of Sunday hunting. Did you say lobby?

One Voice fights against the practice of hunting in France and around the world, and has been campaigning for a Sunday without hunting since its creation in 1995 under the sponsorship of Théodore Monod.

(1)
Download the results of the study

(2)
IFOP / ASPAS survey conducted in July 2009.

(3)
Excerpt from How to walk in the woods without getting shot « Sincethe circular Deferre of October 15 1982 the Prefects are invited to no longer prohibit hunting in a perimeter around houses, but to regulate shooting in the direction of these dwellings. For example, shots « within range » or within a certain distance (usually 150 meters) are generally prohibited in the direction of « dwellings, tracks and public roads, railways and railway rights-of-way ». power lines, airports, public meeting places and stadiums. In this context, there is nothing to prevent hunters from leaning right against a house and shooting outwards!”

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One Voice infiltrates the Angora industry and reveals the torture of rabbits in French farms

One Voice infiltrates the Angora industry and reveals the torture of rabbits in French farms

One Voice infiltrates the Angora industry and reveals the torture of rabbits in French farms
15.09.2016
One Voice infiltrates the Angora industry and reveals the torture of rabbits in French farms
Fashion

On September 15, One Voice, an animal rights association that has been active since 1995, will release a video and an investigation report summarizing months of undercover work inside several French Angora rabbit farms. The images and the comments of the breeders gathered on this occasion are without appeal: not only are the rabbits raised in battery style conditions of feeding, but comfort and hygiene are more than doubtful here. They are overexploited in a cruelty that falls on
deaf hears the screams of their agony.

Stacked in multiple cages, the angora rabbits filmed by the investigators of One Voice in the French farms finally have no fate more enviable than those of China. It will be remembered that a film broadcast by the PETA association on Chinese rabbit farms (90% of world production)
chilled the opinions in 2013.

Unfortunately, good animal welfare practices, though recommended by the Ministry of Agriculture as the guiding principles of a five-year plan to 2021, do not seem to be more concrete. And yet, here and there we boast about the reputation for fine quality French angora, something that is just tied to the hair of an animal bred for only one thing and not for the hideous methods of those who exploit it for profit.

A furious investigation …

This is important investigative work. Investigators from the Whistle-blower Association have infiltrated this environment for months (In France there are about forty farms operating with thousands of rabbits, figures obtained during our investigation and for which we have not been able to obtain any official documents as the sector seems to be poorly regulated). Their objective was to study the whole chain, to document the hair removal from rabbits because it does not happen every day. The rotation in the activities plays: phases of reproduction, the sexing of baby rabbits, food production with the flesh from unwanted males (males have less hair, they are mainly intended for pâté or the butchers). A lot of waiting between hair removal, three times a year, which means permanent stress for rabbits, stripped after the “harvesting of hair” and exposed to thermal shocks, with no further temperature protection in their hutches.

The association One Voice therefore worked for one semester, from February to July 2016, in six different farms: their findings take stock of the state of play in a sector in decline, but still harmful, if we judge by this simple workers recorded comment, among others: « the females are a little more fragile than the males at the level of the skin. It happens that it tears. Sometimes, like, oops, there is a piece of skin that comes with it. When it starts, I have had times when I have torn off everything, I had to finish removing hair with scissors because all the skin came off, so there you spend more time. I have seen it sometimes where you spend up to two hours on a rabbit that was tearing everywhere. Sometimes you say to yourself, you’d better knock her on the head that one.  »

Large-scale public action

Disgusted by the screaming of rabbits hastily being stripped of hair, not simply combed as one would like to believe, Muriel Arnal, president and founder of One Voice, takes the same position here as in the case of the use of all animal fur: Angora must be banished from France, and we have great hope to make things change for these animals. Our investigation legally supports our demand: yesterday we obtained the ban on the sale of fur from dogs and cats imported from China. There is no reason that products of angora, obtained in such conditions, can be freely circulating on home ground.  »

State mediation is essential to act with stakeholders in this sector, which visibly enjoys great flexibility in terms of regulations and controls with the Departmental Directions of the Protection of Populations (DDPP). “To stop such practices, surviving form the Middle Ages and based on an unworthy cruelty, we are ready to work with the breeders to support them in their conversion,” explains Muriel Arnal.

One Voice (France representative of the international Free Fur Alliance coalition) has chosen to lodge a complaint against the main local breeders, located in Loire-Atlantique (44), on the basis of several
breaches of the regulations in force (breeding conditions and
slaughtering, acts of cruelty). A practice deemed unacceptable, the
sale of rabbits that have developed breast tumours to an experimental
laboratory, where they will experience a second ordeal, weighed up in
the choice of a legal action that targets the top of the chain.

Angora, out of farms and cabinets

On the stop-angora.fr site, a petition has been launched to the Minister of Agriculture so that emergency measures, precautionary measures or controls are taken in place on these farms, and that in the long run both their activity and trade in products of Angola are banned in France. In addition, the association invites the public to stop buying Angora wool fabrics and to empty their closets. “From the footage, I would not understand why people could continue to wear sweaters with a smile in angora. We will be able to collect them and bring them to cat shelters, where they will be much more useful,” concludes Muriel Arnal, who hopes for an influx of cartons containing “angora” signed clothing, resulting from animal suffering to the offices of her association…

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A new case of the Link between all violence

A new case of the Link between all violence

A new case of the Link between all violence
23.08.2016
A new case of the Link between all violence
Domestic animals

Morbihan (56) – The wife of the farmer ran away. She did not hesitate to take a stand against her brutal husband, because now she is safe from his violence, she knows what is happening on the farm. She denounces the blows from iron bars or clubs that unceremoniously fall on piglets and sows’ in her testimony, she mentions that the breeder goes so far as to plant his fingers in the eyes of the animals, beating them until they bleed. The most ill-fated corpses will not reach the abattoir, who themselves could raise the alarm. They will be discreetly abandoned in the countryside. One Voice filed a complaint  to ensure that the 200 pigs from the farm were kept safe.

If there is still a need to exemplify the link between animal abuse and violence against humans, here is a new individual case that will
convince. The Zoe cell, responsible for investigations within the One Voice association, was alerted before the summer of an untenable situation. The investigations are without appeal. The wife complained of domestic violence, but she was worried about the fate of the pigs of the farm, delivered to the free will of the master of the place.

Everyone is king at home, until mistreatment, punishable by law, requires outside intervention. The story of the fugitive wife and initial findings of investigation on the conditions of detention of animals have led One Voice to file a complaint and to mobilize around such unworthy behaviour.

Set in a perimeter without much maintenance, the buildings are in rough blocks, with tin roofs. These primary boxes have neither light nor litter, and the grated area much smaller than the mud where the piglets amass in number. Some suffocate, all dirty, either nervous or have given up. Pregnant sows remain enclosed in metal stalls, exposed without water in full sunlight, frothy lips, dehydrated. They will be in the wind or driving rain for hours until the farmer remembers them. A spell totally inappropriate for animals sensitive to climatic conditions, like the cleanliness of the buildings they occupy.

The farmer does not care. His cruelty is exercised freely. It is to be feared that the departure of his wife accentuates the resentment towards the animals under his responsibility. Such conditions are unacceptable, regardless of the economic context.

One Voice, an association committed since 1995 in the defence of the animal cause, has decided to make a complaint so that first protective measures are taken before definitive replacement of the pigs away from the farmer. This complaint, so-called duplicates with that of the battered wife, was initially classified without consequences. A second complaint was therefore lodged emphasizing these new elements, so that the authorities intervene urgently. A petition also circulates on the website and the social networks of the association.

Muriel Arnal, president-founder of One Voice, justifies the will of action of her association: « The suffering inflicted daily on defenceless animals is intolerable to us. When it is the work of violent individuals who are also guilty of mistreatment of other humans, which is generally the case with such owners, we do not sit idly by and watch. I hope that they will be put out of harm’s way and that we will quickly find a permanent solution for his pigs that we forget that they are indeed sentient beings. »

Press
contact, Muriel Arnal

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