For the closing down of a colony of baboons at the University of Murcia

For the closing down of a colony of baboons at the University of Murcia

For the closing down of a colony of baboons at the University of Murcia
05.01.2023
For the closing down of a colony of baboons at the University of Murcia
Animal testing

Stop Camarles, One Voice’s Spanish partner, has just revealed a video of the conditions that beagles and baboons are being kept in at a Spanish university where toxic products are being injected into the brains of monkeys and pig organs are being transplanted onto them. Along with us, call for this colony of baboons in Murcia to be closed down.

Edit from 19 January 2023

European regulations indicate a minimum of four to seven square metres of ground for two baboons, but a minimum of three to six cubic metres in volume for an individual in a zoo. Therefore, it is difficult to ascertain compliance with this regulation on the basis of the videos provided.

On 12 October, a baboon escaped from the cage in which it was being kept by the university. After having crossed the motorway and travelled from roof to roof, he was recaptured, hit with a tranquilliser dart, then taken back to the cage.

In response to this ‘incident’, One Voice is naturally working with the Spanish association Stop Camarles (with whom we are already partners for many projects involving primates destined for laboratories) and fifteen other associations worldwide to ask the ethical committee at this university and Spanish ministries to get this colony of baboons closed and to supervise the transfer of the animals to a sanctuary who could meet their needs without subjecting them to gruesome experiments.

The university will not even respect the regulations…

Yesterday morning, Stop Camarles revealed new images and videos, which show the dog kennels and monkey cages.

The one that escaped in October could, for the first time, feel the grass under his feet and climb real trees. Forcibly returned to the cage, he will have to, like dozens of other members of the colony, be content with a hanging tyre and a few platforms fixed onto the wire mesh.

The overcrowding is blatant. [Edit from 19 January 2023] Not to mention that keeping such different species such as baboons and beagles in such close proximity could potentially create stress that is easily avoidable for individuals from both species.

Baboons’ fate

Like the majority of science universities, this university in the south-east of Spain particularly offers courses in veterinary practice, biology, and biochemistry, interspersed with practical work involving live animals. And research using baboons is no more pleasing. Many of them were exploited here in the 2000s to study the xenotransplantation of pigs’ organs (a practice that has been condemned for a long time).

More recently, in 2019 and 2020, two articles were published by the University of Murcia in collaboration with French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Quatari counterparts. Here we discovered that more than thirty baboons from this colony had been injected in the brain with products (or had been used as controls) to create the appearance of dementia to be observed for two years, before all being killed for analysis of said brains…

Help us to put an end to these practices

We have started a petition along with Stop Camarles, Action for Primates, and PETA to demand the closure of this baboon colony at the University of Murcia and for the animals to be transferred to a suitable sanctuary. You can sign this petition and share it on social media in order to support our request and encourage Spanish authorities to respond to it favourably.

I demand the closure of the baboon colony in Murcia


These animal testing practices exist in Spain but also in France. You can consult our website dedicated to the figures and to recently authorised experiments for more information.

If you have witnessed practices that outrage you, do not hesitate to oppose them (as the students at the University of Strasbourg did recently, thanks to whom lab work using live hamsters will not be repeated next year) and to contact us to give your witness statement.


Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Lire la vidéo

The one that escaped in October could, for the first time, feel the grass under his feet and climb real trees. Forcibly returned to the cage, he will have to, like dozens of other members of the colony, be content with a hanging tyre and a few platforms fixed onto the wire mesh.

The overcrowding is blatant.  [Edit from 19 January 2023] Not to mention that keeping such different species such as baboons and beagles in such close proximity could potentially create stress that is easily avoidable for individuals from both species.

Baboons’ fate

Like the majority of science universities, this university in the south-east of Spain particularly offers courses in veterinary practice, biology, and biochemistry, interspersed with practical work involving live animals. And research using baboons is no more pleasing. Many of them were exploited here in the 2000s to study the xenotransplantation of pigs’ organs (a practice that has been condemned for a long time).

More recently, in 2019 and 2020, two articles were published by the University of Murcia in collaboration with French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Quatari counterparts. Here we discovered that more than thirty baboons from this colony had been injected in the brain with products (or had been used as controls) to create the appearance of dementia to be observed for two years, before all being killed for analysis of said brains…

Help us to put an end to these practices

We have started a petition along with Stop Camarles, Action for Primates, and PETA to demand the closure of this baboon colony at the University of Murcia and for the animals to be transferred to a suitable sanctuary. You can sign this petition and share it on social media in order to support our request and encourage Spanish authorities to respond to it favourably.

I demand the closure of the baboon colony in Murcia


These animal testing practices exist in Spain but also in France. You can consult our website dedicated to the figures and to recently authorised experiments for more information.

If you have witnessed practices that outrage you, do not hesitate to oppose them (as the students at the University of Strasbourg did recently, thanks to whom lab work using live hamsters will not be repeated next year) and to contact us to give your witness statement.

Open letter to Fabien Di Filippo regarding the fate of dogs neglected by the management at Arche de Bouba

Open letter to Fabien Di Filippo regarding the fate of dogs neglected by the management at Arche de Bouba

Open letter to Fabien Di Filippo regarding the fate of dogs neglected by the management at Arche de Bouba
05.01.2023
Open letter to Fabien Di Filippo regarding the fate of dogs neglected by the management at Arche de Bouba
Domestic animals

One Voice is contacting a Moselle Member of the European Parliament and the Marne Prefecture regarding the animals abandoned in a pound.

One Voice has been alerted to the fact that the management at the Ranguevaux pound-rescue, Arche de Bouba, might be operating at different sites in several departments: the town of Nitting in Moselle and Sainte-Menehould in Marne. After joining the Moselle Prefecture, we contacted Mr Fabien Di Filippo, the deputy of the fourth constituency of this department, in order to ask him to implement measures to help rescue dogs who will be abandoned in this miserable place. We are also writing to the Marne Prefecture in order to ensure that no animal can be kept in this place in Sainte-Menehould any longer.

Photo DR

Deputy
Fabien Di Filippo
National Assembly
126, rue de l’Université
75007 Paris

Vannes, 5 January 2023

Subject: Pound-rescue in Ranguevaux – Arche de Bouba

Dear Deputy,

You have surely been made aware of the latest facts relating to the matter of the Ranguevaux pound-rescue (57700), which has now been around for several years and which perfectly illustrates the lack of respect given to animals suffering under public powers in France.

The calvary of several sick animals (fleas, worms, coryza, typhus, feline infectious peritonitis, feline immunodeficiency virus) needing urgent treatment, abandoned and kept in a place that is more like a rubbish tip than a pound, ended on Monday 26 December. The police, accompanied by an animal protection association and elected representatives from the town of Ranguevaux, were able to obtain their transfer to another organisation. Unfortunately, as reported in the regional media, some will not have survived and will have died with no concern.

With the Ranguevaux pound already being known unfavourably by the Moselle Prefecture’s veterinary services for several years, this situation could and should have been avoided.

Several dozen animals have already been taken there over time, suspensions of activities had been ordered, and the management had even been convicted of animal abuse and deceptive commercial practice.

It is unbearable that this pound-rescue’s activities are able to continue. What are the relevant authorities waiting for to get this place definitively closed? How many innocent animals are still going to suffer in agony for public authorities to make the necessary decisions?

Even if the surviving cats could have left this hell, One Voice had been warned of the fact that the dogs belonging to the management would themselves be kept in revolting conditions at another site in the town of Nitting, part of your constituency. Around ten dogs will effectively be kept in an unsanitary cabin as well as in kennels and on a veranda, and will only be fed two or three times a week because no daily human presence is guaranteed here.

Additionally, we have been informed of the fact that you would have known about these dogs’ situation and that you have refused to react to it, all while approving the words of an elected official who had stated: “They are only animals”.

If this is the case, One Voice would like to know your position on the situation, as well as the actions that you intend to take so that the animals that are still on-site can be rescued quickly, and above all, to get this place closed, which should have been done a long time ago.

We thank you for your attention to this request and await your response. Deputy, please accept our sincere regards.

Muriel Arnal,
One Voice President

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Non-protected herds and wolves killed: Ferus, One Voice, and the Pôle Grands Prédateurs are filing two pleas in Doubs

Non-protected herds and wolves killed: Ferus, One Voice, and the Pôle Grands Prédateurs are filing two pleas in Doubs

Non-protected herds and wolves killed: Ferus, One Voice, and the Pôle Grands Prédateurs are filing two pleas in Doubs
20.12.2022
Non-protected herds and wolves killed: Ferus, One Voice, and the Pôle Grands Prédateurs are filing two pleas in Doubs
Press release

The Jura mountains are a wolf recolonisation front. The species has only reproduced there since 2019 and today there is an inventory of only two packs, including on the Swiss side. The status of this species therefore remains very precarious. However, following several attacks on young calves left in the field without their mother and with no protection, French public authorities prefer to kill wolves because they have decided to consider bovine herds as non-protectable: two animals have already been slaughtered this autumn including the mother of the pack in Risoux. A useless ‘solution’ that does not protect herds and wipes out families of wolves. And an illegal solution. Our associations have therefore filed a plea at the Besançon Administrative Tribunal against two decrees for defence shots signed by the Doubs Prefect on 10 October 2022.

Our legal arguments focus largely on two main areas:

The unenforceable nature and illegality of the technical note

The absolute ‘non-protectability’ of bovine (and equine) herds on principle focuses on a simple technical note from the Prefect coordinating the National Wolf Plan of 28 June 2019. This note has never been published so it is unenforceable and has no legal value.
This note highlights “unsuitable protection methods“, and for good reason! No research or serious testing of passive or active protection measures for bovines has actually been developed in France, while wolves have been back in our country for thirty years now.
As the technical note bluntly admits, it is “the State’s choice “not to make bovine and equine herds eligible for protection”“. In view of its unenforceable nature, this note cannot now base decisions on the authorisation of shooting at wolves under the exonerating framework of non-protectable herds.
The general nature of the ‘non-protectability’ rule for all bovine and equine herds is therefore perfectly legal.

Risk of a local population disappearing

In the “Guidance document on the strict protection of animal species of interest to the community pursuant to the Habitats Directive 92/43/CEE, established by the European Commission for the application of articles 12 and 16 of the Habitats Directive” (guidance document on which the French State must rely to develop its regulations with regard to the protection of wolves), it indicates that ‘”an appropriate evaluation of the impact of a particular exemption should in most, if not all, cases be at a level below that of the biogeographical region, for the sake of ecological coherence. A level of interest in this regard could be that of the (local) population.
Which is to say that the authorisation of shooting wolves — even if they respect the shooting caps on a national level — must also be followed on a local level.
Yet the increase of defence shot decrees (more than 25) in the Jura mountains therefore also puts the population of wolves in great danger at a local level.
Finally, the non-publication of all defence shot decrees, if they are not illegal, makes decisions when it comes to shooting non-transparent and does not help in establishing a transparent dialogue between different parties.

Let’s remind ourselves again that the studies carried out (such as the thesis by Oksana Grente, France – 2021) have not approved shooting at wolves as a solution when it comes to preying on herds.
By continuing in this way, our three associations maintain that the State is wasting precious time for farmers and lacks in its advisory role for implementing effective protection measures in order to live alongside this protected species!
The only effective solution that remains is the effective protection of herds, bovines included.

June 18, 2024 update

Almost two years after we lodged our appeal, the Besançon administrative court ruled in our favor and annulled both orders!

In the case of the order concerning a herd of bovines, the judge ruled that the prefect could not unilaterally declare that a herd of cows could not be protected. In order to reach this conclusion, he must have a technical and economic analysis carried out, and submit it to the prefect coordinating the national wolf action plan. None of this had been done in this case.

For the second decree, the prefect had declared that the sheep herd concerned was well protected. However, the judge found that no evidence had been provided by the administration to confirm this. In addition, the prefect considered that the flock had suffered “significant damage”, yet the court noted that it had not been attacked for over 13 years!

The two decrees allowing the shootings were therefore illegal.

We’ve been saying it for years: the State must ensure that flocks are protected and help farmers to do so properly, not hand out shooting permits to have wolves shot!