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In the United States, animal testing laboratories will finance alternative methods

In the United States, animal testing laboratories will finance alternative methods

In the United States, animal testing laboratories will finance alternative methods
19.05.2023
In the United States, animal testing laboratories will finance alternative methods
Animal testing

On 8 May 2023, the State of Maryland in the United States passed a law to create a fund for the development of substitute methods for animal testing. And the State will not be the only one to fund it, since laboratories carrying out experiments on animals will themselves also participate by means of an obligatory annual contribution. One Voice is encouraging the European Union and France to follow this example.

In December 2022, a modification to American law already allowed the sale of medications without them having to be tested on animals.

This time, Maryland is showing the way to a future without animal testing by choosing to finance alternatives and by involving a contribution from laboratories. Based on the number of animals used each year, each laboratory in this small Eastern State of the United States must give an annual contribution which can range from 5000 to 75,000 dollars. And if one of them refuses to pay for their participation in the development of more ethical research methods, they must pay a fine that can be up to 1000 dollars for every day it goes unpaid.

Unfortunately, the effects of this initiative are weakened by the calculation method used by the American Ministry of Agriculture, who has conveniently chosen not to count mice, rats, birds, and fish as victims of animal testing… so the vast majority of individuals concerned.

Insufficient investments in France

In France, where 600 laboratories use 3000 animals per year each on average according to statistics, the creation of such a fund would allow 30 million euros per year to be given to research into substitute methods for animal testing. This amount could supply the FC3R, which would need supplementary financing: created in 2021 and active since 2023, this centre serving to finance ‘replacing’ projects can currently only invest 784,467 euros shared between 19 projects. A very small amount in relation to the 81% of French people in favour of developing alternative methods for experiments inflicted upon animals.

While we have just asked the European Commission to commit in favour of a plan aiming to progressively eliminate all tests on animals, One Voice is encouraging the European Union and France to more seriously finance alternative methods.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

After the repeat conviction and evasion of trainer Gilbert Bauer, what hope is there for Baby?

After the repeat conviction and evasion of trainer Gilbert Bauer, what hope is there for Baby?

After the repeat conviction and evasion of trainer Gilbert Bauer, what hope is there for Baby?
17.05.2023
After the repeat conviction and evasion of trainer Gilbert Bauer, what hope is there for Baby?
Exploitation for shows

We are publishing, on the occasion of the latest conviction of Baby’s trainer, recent footage and other older footage that has never been released, of the way in which the African elephant had to survive and the conditions that she was kept in and still has to endure, now that he has transferred her to the Belvédère Zoo in Tunisia. Shameful for the Ministry of Ecology who has deliberately ignored the misery of French circus elephants and, with their inaction, has allowed their endless suffering and exploitation to continue.

One Voice was the source of the first conviction of Gilbert Bauer in 2019, a circus trainer who locked Baby up all year round at the big cat park in Saint-Léger-en-Bray run by his brother, Kid. Both of them lied shamefully to the public, making them believe that the old elephant suffering with her leg was free to roam around the park, when in fact she was being kept shut up day and night in the transport lorry, completely illegally. Bauer then disappeared for a while.

Lying to the public, backstage hell, and, thanks to One Voice, two convictions!

And when we thought we had come across Dumba at the Cirque de Paris in Aubevoye in the Eure Department in March 2020, it was in fact Baby that we had found there, exploited as always. We therefore enlisted a private investigator, documented the show and the living conditions outside of it, and carried out surveillance for several days, during which the entire country closed in on itself and turned its attention to the fate of the animals in travelling circuses.

This investigation was the subject of a detailed report and a complaint to the OFB, who helped, among others, to save Jon and lionesses Patty, Céleste, Hannah, and Marli from this circus. In September 2022, we facilitated Bauer being convicted again, this time for a repeat offence, thanks to a report from the investigator from March 2020.

Bauer, having taken refuge with a film trainer, kept Baby in the lorry and put up barriers around it.

Under pressure put on by our investigation footage and our proceedings in 2019, from 2020, Bauer settled at the property of Muriel Bec, an animal trainer, specifically for wolves for cinema and all kinds of filming. There, the discourse was equally well-established on the so-called ‘ideal’ conditions for keeping Baby in (a pond would have been dug for her, in reality for the view from paying lodges) as on the safety (so no one could approach and ‘risk’ taking incriminating images).

Idealised images for clients and the television. A lifetime of isolation for Baby

The only moments when she had a chance to stretch her legs in an enclosure and could choose her own food from the trees were the days where clients paid for three hours to see this, or when a television channel came to the depths of Loiret to film a reality TV show or an infomercial or documentary.

And she was not given this opportunity between March and October… Outside of the paid seasonal outings, such as at Kid Bauer’s in Parc Saint Léger, Baby hardly left her lorry. Or else to take a few steps, under a small marquee in front of her metal box.

The tarpaulins covering the fences in 2020 were turned into high wooden walls. We have seen the barriers being put up around the lorry, this small tent, and the trainer’s caravan becoming even more solid and impenetrable over time.

The latest conviction prevented him from showing Baby to the public for five years!

From September 2022 and for a duration of five years, Bauer could no longer exploit Baby. And, as indicated in the Ministerial decree of 2011 on travelling establishments (still valid seeing as the Ministry of Ecology has not published the enforcement decrees for the law voted in in November 2021), wild animals cannot be kept under travelling conditions (read: in a lorry) if they are not being shown to the public.

Baby continued to be exploited until at least 31 October 2022. It was still possible to pay for an ‘elephant encounter’. In February 2023, she was still used as the face of the “See you in animal land” imagery.

We have known for a few months that Bauer was looking everywhere for a place to put Baby for the next five years. We are ready to take her in and to place her into a sanctuary, but as always, the authorities have turned a deaf ear. Everything, absolutely everything, that we were planning would have been better than what happened. As always. Maya knows all about it, and Dumba too. Gilbert Bauer’s Machiavellian sleight of hand was to offer Baby to the ‘Tunisian people’ and to thus continue to exploit her at the Belvédère Zoo, a place where we have seen people throwing stones at a crocodile and where a bear is on its last legs. At 38 years of age, Baby will never find peace. And as for Bauer, in reality, he has impunity.

The law against mistreatment, like the ministry that enacted it in France, has abandoned circus animals to a worse fate, from exploitation, subletting, bartering, reselling… We will never give up on them!

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Snowball effect against digging out badgers! Departments at the Bern Convention?

Snowball effect against digging out badgers! Departments at the Bern Convention?

Snowball effect against digging out badgers! Departments at the Bern Convention?
17.05.2023
Snowball effect against digging out badgers! Departments at the Bern Convention?
Wildlife

After having won resounding victories in the Haute-Vienne, Tarn-et-Garonne, Manche, Orne, Oise, and Charente-Maritime Departments, One Voice is continuing its extensive legal attack to save families of badgers from being dug out. Although hundreds of individuals have been saved thanks to our actions, the road ahead remains long to reach our goal: for no badger to be dug out this spring.

Time after time, administrative jurisdictions have ruled to suspend the additional period for underground hunting with hounds from May to September. For years, with our investigative footage, we have condemned this type of cruel hunting, particularly for badgers and dogs, as well as it being illegal. And our fight will not stop there: outside of our action on a national level, we have just filed a complaint against France at the Bern Standing Committee along with our partners.

According to the State: if in doubt, let’s make hunters happy!

Digging out is a type of hunting which persecutes families of badgers for hours. In the confusion, the female badgers try to defend their young, sometimes injuring the dogs, before themselves being killed by hunters by being attacked with a knife or gun. The young who survive these assaults die a few days later, left alone in the woodland.

The arguments put forward by the State to defend this practice are swept aside by tribunals: yes, in the spring and summer, badger cubs are still present in the setts. Yes, underground hunting is a ‘blind’ hunt, to quote the Amiens Administrative Tribunal, which does not allow a distinction between the young, adults, or even individuals from a protected species.

And prefectures accept the fact that measures imposed by law are not respected. Numerous decrees for which we have obtained a suspension have been passed even though the State services have no data on badgers; no idea of the number of individuals present in the country and of the alleged damage that is the subject of far-fetched assessments. In Haute-Vienne, the State claimed that the badgers would prey on cattle!

If in doubt, ‘let’s make hunters happy’ seems to be the State’s motto when it comes to hunting.

If, in these six areas, the female badgers and their families have their lives saved in the months to come, the list of prefectures authorising digging out this spring and summer will continue to grow. In ten other departments, the additional period for underground hunting will open from 15 May. And a number of them have not, to this date, published the decrees authorising this practice. A way to ensure that, even if we refer to a judge, hunters have enough time to be able to devote themselves to their hobby.

Our fight continues to obtain a ban on underground hunting

The fight against digging out is a marathon: on 17 May at 10:15am, we will be at the Orléans Administrative Tribunal to obtain a definitive cancellation on two decrees passed in 2021 which authorise additional periods in Indre-et-Loire and Loir-et-Cher.

In the weeks to come, we will increase our action to continue to give badgers a voice and to obtain an urgent suspension on them being hunted during this very delicate time for their young. Emergency interim proceedings have already been set at the Clermont-Ferrand Administrative Tribunal on 30 May at 10am for the Allier and Puy-de-Dôme Departments where we will step in alongside FNE 03 and FNE 63. In Lyon, we will defend badgers in Rhône on 31 May at 10am. In Orléans, on 5 June at 2pm, we will attack the Eure-et-Loir and Loiret decrees.

Other hearings will be announced for the Vendée, Loir-et-Cher, Lot-et-Garonne, Meuse, and also the Aisne Departments, where hunters want to kill young badgers to be able to rifle through the contents of their stomachs in order to prove that they would be weaned by May. With our partner AVES, we will request an immediate suspension on this heinous decree.

Although magistrates appear to already understand that digging out badgers in the spring is illegal, this is far from being the case for our councillors or local authorities: to convince them, continue to sign our petition for the badgers and for a radical reform on hunting!

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

A hunting pen in Loire-Atlantique for killing animals in total privacy

A hunting pen in Loire-Atlantique for killing animals in total privacy

A hunting pen in Loire-Atlantique for killing animals in total privacy
15.05.2023
A hunting pen in Loire-Atlantique for killing animals in total privacy
Wildlife

In Loire-Atlantique, there a few hunting pens that exist on our map… One of them is one of the smallest we know of. Having been warned, we thus decided to go there.This enclosed place, created around twenty years ago to kill animals among hunting friends and clients, is not worried about the presence of the neighbours “training dogs” to massacre animals or even organising foxhunts. Organised animal cruelty on 60 hectares of non-compliance, approved by the authorities.

At the start, the property was home to a farm of wild boars. But the owner had to close it, forced to by a legal decision (that is what he said anyway, but an intervention by Nos Viventia into this enclosure a few months ago leaves us wondering about this). So, for more than ten years, the power struggle of the locals continued with the owner. Despite regulations banning the possibility of opening such a place (size of the enclosure, protected forest that should allow the animals to pass through, danger to neighbours, and open conflict due to building permits…), the authorities seem to have yielded to all of the owner’s demands. The fences are not regulation size? Never mind, they still authorise the deal!
Even the pipes, small ditches between the ponds, and small streams passing from one property to another, have been blocked by mesh to ensure that no animal survives, something which is normally prohibited.

Because in France, we have a sneaking suspicion that each time hunters ask for something, prefectures let them have it. The lobby is powerful. And how many prefects or parliamentarians are themselves hunters…

The footage from April 2022 that our investigators brought back even shows that in the middle of a clearing there is a small bird farm. Whether it be pheasants or partridges, they are released according to their desires and for ‘shooting sessions’ on live animals. Birds that have not even learnt to live without humans there to feed them, who would never have flown up high or far, as we showed in our previous investigations into these types of breeding farms.

Nature has been pillaged to create this pen. Deer and other woodland animals in the nearby area are often found in traps. A small mound makes one of the fences lower on the outside of the property than on the inside. Animals can therefore easily go into the park but can find it difficult to get back out. The blocked pipes prevent small animals from getting from one pond to the next.

And twice, a few weeks ago, the neighbours protected a large deer that came to find refuge at their house from the hunters and their hounds. And each time, they have to remove the dogs and put off the hunters who are trying to get into their home to kill these splendid animals. A situation that has become unbearable.

Finally, the new owner of the premises has tried to extend their land by trimming their neighbours’ land in order to reach the minimum area for a hunting pen… A scandal that is all the more concerning as the slightest bullet ricocheting would also risk these neighbours’ lives!

Take a look at our infiltration investigations into penned hunting in Bourgogne, Île-de-France, and Sologne.
Sign our petition0073 to ban penned hunting and for a radical reform on hunting!

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Badger digging: 10 associations are filing a complaint to the Bern Committee

Badger digging: 10 associations are filing a complaint to the Bern Committee

Badger digging: 10 associations are filing a complaint to the Bern Committee
15.05.2023
Badger digging: 10 associations are filing a complaint to the Bern Committee
Wildlife

By authorising badger hunting for 8 out of 12 months, in an unrestricted way and without knowing the population number, France is not following the Bern Convention of 1982 relating to the conservation of wildlife. On International Badger Day on 15 May 2023, our associations have thus decided to file a complaint before the Bern Committee. Initiated by ASPAS (Association pour la protection des animaux sauvages [Association for the Protection of Wild Animals]) and with participation from AVES France, the Renard Blaireau Collective, FNE Aura, FNE Loire, Humanité & Biodiversité, the LFDA, MELES, the LPO, and One Voice, this new action for badgers is happening after an official petition was signed by more than 100,000 citizens, the publication of a particularly incriminating Senate report against badgers, and the moment when they, sadly, opened a new season of killing by underground hunting with hounds in numerous French departments.

In France, not only are badgers affected by hunting from mid-September to 15 January, but they can also be subjected to an ‘additional period’ of digging out between 15 May and the opening of the general hunting season in September, a period in the year when dependent young animals are still likely to be present in the setts. This type of hunting, called underground hunting with hounds, is particularly violent and destructive not only to badgers, but also their habitat which is a refuge for numerous other species, included protected ones.

In ratifying the Bern Convention in 1982, France committed to take legislative measures and appropriate and necessary regulations to protect wild fauna species listed in Annexe III, an Annexe which includes the badger. This convention allows exemptions ‘from exploiting’ these species, but only on the condition that they “do not harm the survival of the species concerned”, that they are selective, and that there is no satisfactory alternative solution.

8 months of hunting per year, on adults and young alike…

Yet, as the associations have shown in the expert report given to the Bern Committee, France does not respect any of these conditions. In fact, while it authorises them being hunted for 8 months of the year, and with no quota (badgers are not subject to hunting plans), it has no idea of the numbers of badgers present in the country… Additionally, hunting by digging out is a non-selective, blind hunting method, during which numerous badger cubs are killed each year (often directly by the dogs sent into their setts), even by the admission of hunters who have handed over their data to prefectures.

The dependence of badgers from 15 May and throughout the whole additional period, shown by several scientific studies, is a strong argument maintained by French administrative tribunals that our associations refer to, and who have authorised the suspension and cancellation of several prefectural decrees in recent years.

These repeated victories have set a legal precedent that is increasingly paying off, because for the 2022-2023 season, only thirty-three departments have authorised underground badger hunting from 15 May, and twenty-one others prefer to authorise this period from a later date.

Prefects are all too often hunters’ puppets

Despite a few steps forward, prefectures remain in control of the timing as long as they are not subject to any legal requirements. Many therefore continue to ignore scientific arguments provided during public consultations, preferring to protect the interests and the macabre hobby of a few hunters. Ditto from the Ministry of the Ecological Transition, who have been referred to several times by our associations, but who insist on turning a deaf ear.

It is for all of these reasons that our associations have decided to file a complaint before the Bern Standing Committee, hoping to pressure France into taking the necessary measures in order to respect the Convention signed more than 40 years ago.

Participating associations and press contacts:

ASPAS: Richard Holding, presse@aspas-nature.org, 07.67.36.22.90
AVES: Frédéric Daniel, frederic.daniel@aves.asso.fr, 06.52.76.20.30
Collectif Renard Blaireau: Corinne Rolland, cocoroll@free.fr, 06.30.49.81.28
FNE AURA: Maxime Flamand, maxime.flamand@fne-aura.org, 09.72.45.06.03
FNE LOIRE: Isabelle Hanicotte-Dufix, isabelle.hanicotte-dufix@orange.fr, 06.11.37.60.13
HUMANITÉ & BIODIVERSITÉ: Nathan Horrenberger, pol.biodiv@humanite-biodiversite.fr
LFDA: Nikita Bachelard, nikita.bachelard@fondation-droit-animal.org, 01.47.07.98.99
LPO: Carine Carbon, carine.carbon@lpo.fr, 06.62.22.20.44
MELES: Virginie Boyaval, virginie.boyaval@gmail.com, 06.24.94.35.09
ONE VOICE: Jessica Lefèvre-Grave, presse@one-voice.fr, 06.88.57.47.17

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

The Ministry of Research has authorised animal testing projects that underestimate pain inflicted

The Ministry of Research has authorised animal testing projects that underestimate pain inflicted

The Ministry of Research has authorised animal testing projects that underestimate pain inflicted
14.05.2023
The Ministry of Research has authorised animal testing projects that underestimate pain inflicted
Animal testing

At the end of April, the Ministries of Higher Education and of Research authorised three new animal testing projects containing serious mistakes. In the non-technical summaries of the procedures in question, the information regarding the degree of severity does not correspond to the true suffering inflicted on the animals. One Voice is asking for a new assessment.

On 18 April, a symposium on animal testing gathered several hundred people together online. At the event, researcher Francelyne Marano maintained that if France carries out more tests classified as ‘severe’ than other European countries, it is because French ethical committees over-classify projects to bring attention to animal suffering. This argument, widespread among animal testing supporters, can be easily refuted with all recent procedures being classified as ‘severe’ having been done so quite rightly.

Barely even three days later, the Ministries of Higher Education and of Research provided us with new proof incriminating French laboratories by authorising three projects with errors in the assessment of their severity. Killing two birds with one stone, they accepted minimising the pain inflicted on the animals being tested on and lying to the general public.

Regulations trampled over and thousands of animals subjected to profound distress

The first project approved by the Ministry aims to expose 1664 young fish to a toxic substance for several days, as well as an increase in temperature, before killing them. No mention of anaesthesia is made and it is therefore fully aware that they will be intoxicated. However, the summary classifies the experiment as being like those that are carried out under full general anaesthetic…

The second experiment, supposedly mild, plans to inject psychotropic drugs several times into 1062 baby mice. Once they are adults, they must be subjected to tests lasting five to ten minutes each, some of which lead to them getting lost in a maze or being forced to swim. Two procedures that are far from allowing them to escape from anguish, as stated in the regulations on the subject of tests leading to pain said to be mild. How can anyone imagine that a mouse plunged into a container of water for several minutes, without knowing if they will come back out alive, can escape from the stress induced by this?

Finally, the Ministry has approved a project that classifies inflicting ‘chronic pain’ for five to twelve weeks on mice, as well as subjecting them to behavioural tests designed to evaluate their pain, as ‘moderate’.

If the degrees of severity indicated are false, how can an ethical evaluation of tests on animals be reliable? And in this case, what is the point of the ethical committees who are in charge?

We have written to the Ministry to ask for a suspension of the authorisation and a re-evaluation of these projects. We are still fully committed to rallying and are renewing our request for a reform of ethical committees in animal testing.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Manche, Orne, Haute-Vienne: a succession of victories by One Voice for badgers!

Manche, Orne, Haute-Vienne: a succession of victories by One Voice for badgers!

Manche, Orne, Haute-Vienne: a succession of victories by One Voice for badgers!
10.05.2023
Manche, Orne, Haute-Vienne: a succession of victories by One Voice for badgers!
Wildlife

After the Dijon tribunal, it is the turn of the courts in Limoges and Caen to suspend decrees being carried out authorising badger digging in the Haute-Vienne, Manche, and Orne departments in the spring. The administrative judges recognise that there is indeed a serious doubt on the legality of these decisions. Initial victories for badgers, who will therefore have their lives saved this spring.

*This spring and summer 2023, badgers and their young will have peace in the Haute-Vienne, Orne, and Manche departments.

Under the framework of our large-scale attack against decrees authorising digging out badgers this spring, we are winning the first key victories.

On Friday 5 May, the Limoges Administrative Tribunal suspended the Haute-Vienne Prefect’s decree from being carried out. For the court, there was indeed a serious doubt on the legality of this decision, passed following botched proceedings.

In Caen, the Administrative Tribunal agreed with us and ruled, beyond the procedural flaws, that additional periods of digging out were likely to harm the young, still present in the setts at this time of year. The judge went further and, for the first time, admitted that the very possibility of digging in the spring is illegal.

At least 800 badgers spared. We will not stop there

Badgers are not animals that reproduce quickly. They only have one litter per year, and generally one or two cubs, rarely more. Their development is slow and it can take more than a year for them to gain independence!

In total, in Haute-Vienne, almost 500 of them will be saved by our actions. In Orne, more than 300 badgers and badger cubs will have their lives saved. The Manche Prefecture did not bother to tell the court how many badgers were killed each year by digging to respond to our arguments and those of AVES France (who took the same position as we did at the hearing for this department).

Year after year, One Voice and its partners obtain significant victories against illegal decrees passed by State representatives. In the weeks to come, we will continue to defend badgers in dozens of departments from Ardennes to Lot-et-Garonne and right up to the Pyrénées-Atlantiques.

More than ever, we need your help to give these animals, martyrs of our woodlands, a voice. Sign the petition to demand an abolition, pure and simple, on digging, and for us to stop using the word badger in a derogatory manner! You can also find us in thirteen towns in France for our coordinated national action to defend them as well as foxes, who are also victims of this cruel hunting method.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

After more than 40 years in the circus and of inaction from public powers, Dumba the elephant has died

After more than 40 years in the circus and of inaction from public powers, Dumba the elephant has died

After more than 40 years in the circus and of inaction from public powers, Dumba the elephant has died
09.05.2023
Germany
After more than 40 years in the circus and of inaction from public powers, Dumba the elephant has died
Exploitation for shows

It is with profound sadness and great anger that we have just learned of the death of Dumba from an intermediary from European Elephant Group. Exploited for her whole life, the elephant had been living in a small enclosure at a settled circus in Germany for a year when she died in March 2022. We had been to see her in October 2021. Subjected to harmful living conditions from the age of two, she had not yet reached her fiftieth birthday.

Her lengthy exploitation in circuses, travelling endlessly in a lorry, and the cowardice of public powers, not to mention the rest, got the better of Dumba, despite the relentless campaign that we led for her.

A life on the road, hired out to the highest bidder…

Alongside our Spanish partner, FAADA, we never stopped following her movements, sometimes in Spain, sometimes in France. On our side of the border, she had been “hired out” by her trainer at the Cirque de Paris for a long time. Under their big top, she had been forced to participate in appalling cynical shows.

At the very start of 2021, after several months of looking for her, we found her shut up in a trailer in Gard in freezing temperatures. Everything about her posture indicated that her legs were hurting her, as confirmed to us by an elephant expert. We immediately filed a complaint and requested Dumba be seized so that she could finally be placed in a sanctuary.

…until the point of exhaustion

Hoping to escape the lawsuits initiated by us, the trainer Kludsky abandoned Dumba in Germany. Placed in a settled circus, the elephant no longer had to participate in shows. But, cooped up in a small enclosure, she did not escape isolation and discontent. To free her, we sought the help of local associations and the German government.

The elephant had been dead for months when we were finally able to get our hands on the report from the veterinarian who had examined her at the end of January 2021. This document, which confirmed that she was suffering from muscle wastage in her legs and felt that it was “of interest and necessary” to carry out additional examinations, should have been given to us long before! We have known for a long time that Dumba was in danger. We alerted the authorities multiple times about the owners exploiting her. They washed their hands of her: the prefect, prosecutor, and even the Ministry. And Dumba has paid a heavy price.

A law complicit in mistreatment

By allowing these establishments to settle down in order to be able to continue to show animals to the public after 2028, the law against animal mistreatment is complicit in exploitation. And what about the inaction of the Ministry of the Ecological Transition, who still have not banned the reproduction of felines in circuses, which are already so numerous in France, one and a half years after the law being passed by the National Assembly? How many more animals will die, stressed out by training, boredom, and imprisonment, before finally being truly rescued?

In memory of Dumba and for all the others, the fight continues.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Underground hunting with hounds: One Voice at work to defend foxes and badgers

Underground hunting with hounds: One Voice at work to defend foxes and badgers

Underground hunting with hounds: One Voice at work to defend foxes and badgers
07.05.2023
Underground hunting with hounds: One Voice at work to defend foxes and badgers
Wildlife

Every year, numerous animals are hunted into their burrows, including when their young are down there. During the spring, hundreds of foxes and badgers continue to be victims of underground hunting with hounds because they are considered as ‘pests’ or targeted by decrees opening additional hunting periods; One Voice once again opposes this cruel practice.

Animals cornered in their burrows by dogs that are forced to go down underground, innocent victims grabbed by metal clamps and ruthlessly killed… We have been speaking out for years against the cruel practice of underground hunting with hounds. Like us, more than eight in ten French people are asking for it to be banned for all animals.

Badger cubs in danger

To blow the monstrosity of this kind of hunting wide open, we have taken considerable risks by infiltrating among diggers. The footage that our investigators have brought back from their infiltration is chilling.

The badgers, rooted out from their shelters after endless moments of terror, are slaughtered with sadistic joy. Including the badger cubs, very much present in the setts and still dependent on their parents in the spring. It is for these young animals, who are killed in total violation of the Environmental Code, that we are still fighting this year to get the prefectural decrees authorising an additional hunting period suspended for this season. This would be ideal for the animals from protected species who sometimes hide in the badgers’ setts and who are also threatened with death.

Foxes: victims of endless persecution

Wrongly considered as pests, foxes can meanwhile be hunted down underground all year round. Mistakenly
unpopular, these animals that are in fact intelligent, social, and essential for biodiversity are hunted down day and night, killed by any means with no limit on cruelty and sometimes even hung. And it is not unusual for traps aimed at small canines to make them collateral victims.

There are many more animals considered as ‘pests’, labelled as a species likely to cause damage and hunted relentlessly. We are defending them too, and are fighting to put an end to this massacre of carrion crows and rooks, or even wood pigeons, least weasels, beech martens, or mustelids.

We have been already making a start for several months on the gargantuan task of defending these animals because prefectures and the Ministry for the Ecological Transition are preparing a decree to go over all species classified as likely to cause damage department by department. These animals will then be in great danger for the next three years, subjected to endless hunting. We plan to attack this decree at the State Council as soon as it is published.

On the weekend prior to 15 May (International Badger Day, which we are participating in) we are organising actions to raise awareness throughout France to say no to underground hunting with hounds for badgers and foxes, at tribunals as well as on the streets. Join us!

 

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

‘Surplus’ animals in animal testing: One Voice’s plea to the administrative tribunal

‘Surplus’ animals in animal testing: One Voice’s plea to the administrative tribunal

‘Surplus’ animals in animal testing: One Voice’s plea to the administrative tribunal
03.05.2023
‘Surplus’ animals in animal testing: One Voice’s plea to the administrative tribunal
Animal testing

Almost one and a half million animals suffer every year from being kept captive in laboratories, stocked ‘just in case’ and eventually thrown out, like equipment. This represents a third of animals shut up in cages for animal testing. We have entered a plea at the Paris Administrative Tribunal so that the Ministry of Research implements effective measures to reduce this number by avoiding the birth of ‘surplus’ animals.

Laboratories consider animals as equipment. This is nothing new. What would it be like if they had an ounce of compassion and a long-term outlook? They stock mice and dogs like packets of pasta, in case they are needed, needs assessed any old how, because this waste of life, animals being thrown in the bin, is not their problem. All they do is waste, even when living beings are concerned. We are going to remind them of their commitment to reduce the number of animals passing through their miserable cages. Muriel Arnal President of One Voice

Almost one and a half million of these animals killed in France every year…

Each year, almost two million animals are used in experiments by French laboratories. Six hundred thousand additional animals are exploited for the creation and upkeep of genetically modified lines…

As for the others, they are bred, kept in captivity, then killed, simply considered as projected ‘stock’. And we are not talking about one or two individuals: in 2017 (the most recent available data), there were almost one and a half million animals in France alone! Among the four million who were bred or imported here each year for animal testing, more than one in three is therefore involved. Some will see their tissue taken for post-mortem analysis, which justifies their exploitation in the eyes of the laboratories. For the others in any case, the suffering of life in a cage could have been avoided.

…while the European Union demands that their number be reduced!

Perhaps these animals suffer less than their peers used in experimental procedures – incidentally, they are not counted in the Ministry’s annual statistical surveys (which we have analysed and presented in detail), and any laboratory accredited in animal testing can breed and kill them at their will. But an entire life in captivity in a minuscule cage (scarcely half an A4 sheet for three adult mice!) is unbearable.

The refusal from the Ministry to implement measures to reduce the number of these animals is against the spirit of the regulations and the French State’s commitment regarding the European Directive. The Directive would like everything possible to be done to reduce their number, whether they are eventually used or not.

We are demanding solutions

Last year, German prosecutors launched an investigation to determine whether laboratories slaughtering surplus animals constitutes a crime as long as it involves killing them without adequate justification. The investigation is still ongoing. If these practices are in fact ruled as criminal, Germany will have another reason to prevent the birth of these animals, which will spare them from suffering a life in captivity devoid of interest.

On our side of the Rhine, at the beginning of October 2022, we wrote to the Ministry of Research on the matter. Not having received a response three months later, and represented by the Géo Avocats law firm who will assist us with these issues, One Voice is therefore deferring to the Paris Administrative Tribunal. Thus, we are asking the judge to arrange for the Ministry to apply European regulations by implementing the necessary measures to obtain a notable reduction in the number of ‘surplus’ animals bred and killed shamelessly. The file is being investigated and we are waiting for the date of the hearing. The courts will have to decide.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice