News Archive - Page 67 of 146

At this very moment, an airline company based in Malta is sending monkeys to American laboratories!

At this very moment, an airline company based in Malta is sending monkeys to American laboratories!
01.09.2022
International At this very moment, an airline company based in Malta is sending monkeys to American laboratories!
Animal testing

Our partner Action for Primates has been informed that a plane belonging to Maleth-Aero — an airline company based in Malta — has just left Cambodia with 360 long-tailed macaques on board and is heading towards Houston in Texas, destined for laboratories. We think that this airline company, whose parent company is AELF FlightService, has recently stepped in to take over the trade given up by others like Egyptair. We, Action for Primates, One Voice, PETA US, and Stop Camarles, are determined to track and campaign against all airline companies who continue to take part in this cruel and inhumane trade.

During the last week, the same plane carried out another flight from Cambodia and one from Vietnam to the Dulles International Airport in the United States. We suspect that on these two occasions, the airline company transported monkeys for the research industry in order to be subjected in particular to toxicity testing (poisoning). After a stopover in Tbilisi in Georgia, the monkeys were made to take a journey totalling more than 21 hours including several hours on the ground. We have contacted American authorities to take part in our investigations when it comes to the welfare of the monkeys on board these flights.

Numerous airline companies, recently including Egyptair, Air France, and Kenya Airways, have put a stop to their involvement in this brutal worldwide trade. Subjecting sensitive and intelligent animals to the stress of being transported over long distances through numerous climates and time zones in order to send them to laboratories is inhumane.

Long-tailed macaques (native to Cambodia) have recently been classified as being an endangered species. They have therefore been put on the IUCN Red List. What is it that threatens them on an international level? The global research industry, the demand for which comes particularly from the United States, Japan, China, and the EU…

Send an email to Maleth-Aero urging the airline company to stop transporting monkeys for research purposes and for toxicity testing: charter@maleth-aero.com and admin@maleth-aero.com

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

And 9! The Administrative Tribunal rules in favour of One Voice once more for the bears in the Pyrenees

And 9! The Administrative Tribunal rules in favour of One Voice once more for the bears in the Pyrenees
31.08.2022
Pyrénées
And 9! The Administrative Tribunal rules in favour of One Voice once more for the bears in the Pyrenees
Wildlife

Following what we consider to be a miscarriage of justice – the Ariège Prefecture has retracted two decrees contrary to the legal ruling from the Toulouse Administrative Tribunal which suspended the scaring of brown bears in the Pyrenees – yesterday, the day after their publication, we urgently filed an interim suspension to stop new applications for scaring. The Tribunal ruled in favour of the bears and therefore in favour of One Voice once again. True humiliation for the Prefecture.

Photo: Collectif Hope

We are asking for peace for the bears, those who are born on French soil and those placed there by force in a hostile environment, after having been uprooted from their families and their country. On one of the mountain pastures, the suspension will prevent the surge of violence that the farmers intend for the bears: flash-balls, sting-ball grenades… On another, they could have had a blast last night, the Prefecture having done everything possible to reduce the time between publication and the application of these laws. All to try to appease discontented farmers…

At the hearing, the services of the Prefecture had made the trip, not understanding how we can object to the fact that animals who are already having trouble surviving without this (and protected by numerous laws!) are thus pushed out of their territory and with so much violence. The Court therefore justified its decision in the following terms:

«Even though it remains subject to debate, the risk that the implementation of these measures will have the effect of pushing bears away from these mountain pastures, which is a component of their natural habitat, and therefore of evicting them from part of their natural range, is not invalid. In the same way, the science alludes to a non-negligible risk that the animal might be subject to auditory injuries, risk of separation from cubs during the flight of the females following, and abortion for pregnant females from the effects of double detonation shots.»

It is difficult to be crystal clear on the risks entailed for bears subjected to ‘scaring shots’. What is more is that this method has not been proven to be effective in protecting herds. Herds made up of animals — should we remind you again? — who are destined for the abattoir and whose losses are compensated.

It is a legally substantiated decision that reminds the Prefecture of the authority of a legal decision that they cannot get around at will. In the absence of new elements, the Court’s annoyance regarding the Ariège Prefecture is particularly noticeable.

«By issuing their new decree of 29 August 2022 and justifying it as they did, without resolving the serious doubt that had justified the decision to suspend their previous decree of 24 June 2022, the Ariège Prefect seems to have directly misled the authority that was linked to the judge’s ruling on the emergency interim proceedings at the Toulouse Administrative Tribunal on 22 August 2022[…] Consequently, the argument alleging that these two decrees from the Ariège Prefect violate the rulings by the judge on 3 August 2022 and 22 August 2022 is capable of creating, at this stage of the investigation, serious doubt regarding the legality of these decrees.»

Considering that the Prefecture therefore still did not justify that the conditions were met for breaching the protection of bears, the Tribunal has urgently suspended these new decrees.

We are ready to attack once more if by chance the Prefecture publishes other similar decrees concerning the five mountain pastures remaining.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Pyrenean bears: with no access to justice, One Voice is demanding that the Prefect steps down!

Pyrenean bears: with no access to justice, One Voice is demanding that the Prefect steps down!
30.08.2022
Pyrenean bears: with no access to justice, One Voice is demanding that the Prefect steps down!
Wildlife

Since this morning, One Voice has attacked two Ariège prefectural decrees issued yesterday, Monday 29 August 2022, which once again authorise the scaring of bears in the Pyrenees. The mere existence of these decrees is a slap in the face of the justice system, which has just urgently suspended the seven preceding decrees following our action. The hearing will take place tomorrow at 10:30am at the Toulouse Administrative Tribunal. In the face of this denial of justice, One Voice is demanding that the Prefect steps down.

Muriel Arnal, President of One Voice, stated:

«Flash-balls, sting-ball grenades: this evening at 8pm violence will be unleashed and will descend on bears. We are appalled but will not stop helping against farmers who only consider nature for their own immediate benefits. It is vital to fight this senseless prostration of the Prefecture and the State before destructive and short-termist lobbies. Even more so at a time where biodiversity, our shared heritage, is going up in smoke at an alarming rate.»

Favouring private interests rather than animals and nature, a sad habit…

How can we be surprised by the Prefect’s attitude when, hardly a year ago, the Ministry for the Ecological Transition did the same in favour of traditional bird hunting, another subject already relevant to animals and lobbies?

As always, the data (unsubstantiated and unreliable, as pointed out by the Tribunal) is provided exclusively by those opposing wild animals: farmers. What do they know about bears?

The Ariège Prefect must step down

It is usual for governments to favour farmers/hunters/trappers to the detriment of animals and nature. We see it every day. But repeatedly denying justice, in a State ruled by law, is absolutely unacceptable.

We are of course attacking the decrees issued (for Ustou and Arreau). And facing denial of legal authority by this representative of the State, we are demanding that the Prefect steps down.

Sting-ball grenades and flash-balls on protected animals…

Simple and intensified scaring is expected from today at 8pm. What is ‘scaring’? It is mainly about flash-balls and sting-ball grenades! All of this accurately prevents female bears from getting to full term in their pregnancies, whether it be due to stress or a lack of strength; these animals must gain a large amount of fat before their hibernation period, during which the babies are born. And we remind you that with less than one hundred individuals, the population is far from viable!

A lobby ready for anything

Bears feed mainly on vegetation. But their mere presence is a source of many irrational fears stirred up by those who want to exploit nature until the end. Even this week, several ewes from a large flock died by jumping into a void in the middle of the night. Farmers have ‘blamed bears’ with no proof, in the absence of any trace of preying. A rumour fed by those who it benefits. Compensation is not paid if it is discovered that the damage is due to stray dogs in the mountains.

Live in peace!

One Voice has never been in favour of the introduction of bears in the Pyrenees, where they arrive into a hostile environment. But now that they are there, we refuse to allow them to be hunted down! They deserve to live in peace and not to be subjected to a surge of violence. And with them, entire spaces of nature will be able to prosper. We, humans, must learn to coexist with animals and nature, as long as there are still some left.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Language elements and rhetorical fallacies in animal testing

Language elements and rhetorical fallacies in animal testing
26.08.2022
France
Language elements and rhetorical fallacies in animal testing
Animal testing

Between the new elements of language and the constant recycling of the same rhetorical fallacies, transparency is far from the only thing lacking in the discourse of people who defend animal testing. We are reviewing these lobbies’ new communication strategies and their hypocrisy.

Tuesday 14 June in Marseille. Entering into a massive hall, dedicated to the businesses who sell laboratory ‘materials’, from litter to transgenic animals, cages, experimental equipment, and cleaning appliances. These same businesses, the revenues for which rely exclusively on animal testing for some, are funding the FELASA Congress 2022 on the theme of ‘communication’.

Hardly surprising, in such a setting, that the ‘key messages’ put forward are the importance of this exploitation for human health, the ‘irreplaceable’ character of ‘experimental’ animals, and the constant priority that is ‘animal welfare’.

“Care culture”

The journal by STAL (Sciences et Techniques de l’Animal de Laboratoire) was published by the AFSTAL (French Association for Laboratory Animal Science & Techniques), who co-organised the congress. In Volume 50 of the journal, we found a translation of the document on “care culture”^[1], a ‘comprehensive and demonstrable institution-wide commitment”, going “beyond simple compliance with regulations in force”…

It is difficult to reconcile this new language element from the animal testing lobbies with the practice of animal testing, which confines animals for their whole lives and subjects them to suffering that has no benefit for them or that could largely be avoided if we gave ourselves the means.

Communication strategies: necessary, additional, and normal

To accompany this attempt to present themselves as benefactors, animal testing circles look to pass their practices off as trivial and clear activities that we do not need to question.

Thierry Decelle (Sanofi) therefore encourages his colleagues to hijack the debate on substitute methods by integrating them into everything, which also includes animal testing:

«We must change the ‘exit strategy’ paradigm as proposed by animal rights activists with a strategy of inclusion of non-animal methods.» Thierry Decelle / Sanofi, STAL n° 49

After all, why talk about research into substitution methods and the end of animal testing when we can ignore the problem?

Kirk Leech (Executive Director of the European animal testing lobby) maintains that in his opinion, it is better to talk about successes in animal testing rather than care or substitute methods. His goal: to influence public opinion by deluging the media with hopes of new treatments, voluntarily ignoring the horrors of animal testing and its incompatibility with moral consideration.

Apparently, the fact that these types of declarations have been made for decades to simply disappear in the archives of history without having helped anyone does not matter.

The pot calling the kettle black

In this game of bad faith, France has won the gold medal at the FELASA Congress. A special mention to a representative from CHU in Lille, who, in a dismissive manner, compared the idea of granting rights to non-human primates with animal trials in the Middle Ages.

He goes on to argue that since more than 80% of Nobel prizes have awarded research using animals, research cannot happen without animals. We wonder what he thinks of the fact that more than 90% of Nobel prizes have rewarded men…

After these enormities which did not make the experimenters react on the spot, it is difficult not to laugh grudgingly when a lobbyist for the umpteenth time reproaches their bad faith in the animal activists who film practices of abuse in laboratories to reveal only a few minutes of video to the general public.

Bad faith is wrong – but only when it comes from their opponents.

^[1]The word care has several meanings. To care about means to be interested in or concerned about someone or something. To care for and to take care of, mean to be concerned about something or to take care of someone. As a noun, care can bring attention to a task to be done correctly, or the care necessary for health or for protecting someone.

This article is the second in a series which will present different aspects of the FELASA 2022 congress

Transparency and communication strategies in animal testing
Language elements and rhetorical fallacies in animal testing
The animal testing industry makes propaganda
The ethical short-sightedness of animal testing
Will there soon be more primates in laboratories?

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

One Voice has had all of the prefectural decrees that allow the scaring of brown bears in Ariège suspended!

One Voice has had all of the prefectural decrees that allow the scaring of brown bears in Ariège suspended!
24.08.2022
Ariège
One Voice has had all of the prefectural decrees that allow the scaring of brown bears in Ariège suspended!
Wildlife

What a magnificent victory for brown bears at the Toulouse Administrative Tribunal! After an initial urgent suspension at the beginning of August, it was the turn of six other decrees issued by the Ariège Prefecture between 22 June and 7 July 2022 to be suspended! They authorised scaring shots near and on brown bears that live on in the Pyrenees during the 2022 season.

Illustrative photo: a bear and her cubs in Germany

After the hearing on 8 August, where our lawyer, Hélène Thouy, fought argument after argument against the Prefecture, it will have taken almost ten additional days to close the investigation. Days during which elements of both sides continued to be exchanged mercilessly. But the doubt benefited the bears on every level, especially since the Prefecture had no proof for what they were saying to justify the scaring shots.

Administrative tribunals more and more amenable to arguments in favour of animals

Being daring, which pushed us to attack the interim suspension orders — that is to say to urgently interrupt the shooting being put into practice, — has paid off! Perhaps we rejoice in this victory because we think that the tribunals are more and more open to arguments in favour of animals; perhaps because the climate and biodiversity crisis is finally getting through to the tribunals. Or perhaps our arguments are better and better expressed and backed up by data. Perhaps also because the requirement for the State to set an example expected by our fellow citizens has also ended up affecting the judges, who from now on would like any decision to be substantiated and not to seem arbitrary or to be supporting private interests or any corporatism.

We would like to offer peace to these already fragile bears!

Brown bears in France have disappeared bit by bit over the course of time, under human pressures. There are therefore few bears in the Pyrenees. Their population is stagnating below the threshold of viability for the species. There are only about one hundred bears in France, and they feed mainly on vegetation. We are far from the fantasies and irrational fears spread about them by farmers, who are compensated in any case, and always send their herds to the abattoir.

These scarings, required by the State (in the absence of lethal shots called for by farmers) due to the protected status of the species enjoyed by bears on a European and French level, are harmful nevertheless. Particularly because they are susceptible to preventing the female bears from carrying their pregnancies to term, threatening the survival of the species and the individuals concerned.

«It is vital to allow the possibility for brown bears to take back possession of their space. Our species quashes others everywhere and all of the time to ensure their own safety. But we have come too far, the planet is dying with the animals and even us… It is more than time for us to give them what is rightfully theirs. The bears all have their place in the Pyrenean mountains, as do the wolves in the Alpes or the sharks at Réunion Island too.» Muriel Arnal, President of One Voice

Leave nature be…

One Voice incidentally does not support the reintroduction process by humans. What is the use in subjecting them to capture and uprooting them from bears elsewhere, often already pregnant and vulnerable, to force them into a place where nothing is done for their welfare and where a multitude of people want them dead?! The farmers working on the mountain pastures concerned by the suspended decrees are now talking in hushed tones about poaching them…

One Voice does however support, amongst others in the Pyrenees, making natural spaces a sanctuary and rewilding.

Seven hidden mountain pastures!

Bears will thus have the possibility of evolving freely in the mountain pastures of the pastoral groups in Taus-Espugues, Arreau, Coumebière, Sentenac d’Oust, l’Izard, Ourdouas, and, of course, Ustou Col d’Escots where the favourable decision was obtained at the start of August 2022

As a reminder, the State Council has already cancelled the ministerial decrees of 2019 and 2020, allowing prefects to put decrees in place like those that we just got the immediate suspension for. We have therefore launched proceedings alongside this to get the one from this year, published on 20 June 2022, cancelled. We are waiting for a date in the months to come.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Transparency and communication strategies in animal testing

Transparency and communication strategies in animal testing
22.08.2022
Marseille
Transparency and communication strategies in animal testing
Animal testing

From 12 to 16 June an international congress on animal testing (FELASA 2022) is being held in Marseille, gathering together those who practice animal testing throughout the world. Listening to what is being said, we understand that claims of transparency put forward in the last few years are just a communication strategy to attract public favour.

Monday 13 June in Marseille. Two buildings, around fifteen rooms, a huge exhibition hall, and more than one thousand people. The FELASA 2022 congress, co-organised in Marseille by the French Association of Science and Technology in Laboratory Animals (Afstal), has clearly been a success. One Voice was there in order to hear what is being said on the most talked about topic of the year: ‘communication’.

Origins of ‘transparency’

Since February 2021, you have probably heard of the “transparency charter” on animal testing, produced by the Interprofessional Group of Reflection and Communication in Research (Gircor, a French animal testing lobby group). This charter is not a French invention, since a document of the same type was released in England in 2012 and numerous other countries followed.

If you think this is good news, think again: these charters look to change public opinion, which has become more and more negative towards animal testing in recent years. As the slogan of the congress says well, “it’s all about communication”.

‘Transparency’ methods

In fact, the president of the European lobby on animal testing insisted on the benefits of being ‘proactive’ in processing information during the open session. For example, the figures on animal testing can be obtained, negotiated, and broadcast quickly by lobbies, which allows them to put forward a message favouring their interests. Animal rights associations, who will take longer to communicate, therefore have no reverberation in the media.

At the heart of the lobbies’ message is the idea that animal testing is ‘vital’, ‘necessary’ for health and science, ‘well regulated’, and ‘managed’ by the ‘ethical’ principles of the 3Rs (Replacement, Reduction, Refinement). Affirmations that we find in transparency charters and on the websites of the majority of those who have signed these charters, with no more information.

Convince, convince, convince

Throughout the congress, a speaker from the University of Washington in Seattle defined transparency as ‘engaging’ the public on the subject of animal testing. But as was seen on the slides, the goal was in fact to win them over to their cause. Hence the project by this University to appoint a full-time person to work on its communication strategy on this subject.

After all, why spend money on developing alternatives when we can use it to manipulate public opinion?

Transparency… in private

Even though the common problems of animal testing are never mentioned in public, the context of the congress, between colleagues, loosens some tongues. The person responsible for an “organisation responsible for animal welfare” acknowledges for example that some colleagues still tell him regularly that they see no problem with mice being caught by their tail (something which causes stress for these animals).

And the informal discussions with French people present on site are just as interesting, in particular concerning the significant deficiencies in the evaluation and project authorisation systems…

Thus, after having scratched the surface of empty public speeches that aim to be reassuring, we still have a bitter taste in our mouths when it comes to those who still dare to talk about transparency in animal testing… in particular when we must systematically go through tribunals to obtain public documents.

This article is the first in a series which will present different aspects of the FELASA 2022 congress:

Transparency and communication strategies in animal testing
Language elements and rhetorical fallacies in animal testing
The animal testing industry makes propaganda
The ethical short-sightedness of animal testing
Will there soon be more primates in laboratories?

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Forced swimming: the businesses moving forward and the industry that resists

Forced swimming: the businesses moving forward and the industry that resists
16.08.2022
International
Forced swimming: the businesses moving forward and the industry that resists
Animal testing

After our denunciation of electric shock procedures and forced swimming authorised in France this year and us bringing to light the images and practices of forced swimming in France, the Ministry of Research did not react. Elsewhere in the world, businesses and universities are abandoning this test, while anglophone lobbies defend it and pass it off as being essential to the general public, even if it means making muddy comparisons and abandoning any critical thinking.

Image: screenshot of « Animal Models of Depression – Chronic Despair Model (CDM) »

For several weeks, you have rallied with us on social networks to appeal to the Ministry of Research and ask them to ban forced swimming tests. You can keep the pressure on with the model tweets and the letters presented in our previous articles and encourage businesses and French universities to join in with the model tweets proposed at the end of the article.

Interrogated by the media, the Ministry limited itself to repeating the usual clichés on the regulations and ethics committees, failing to comment on the suffering of these animals and to mention the letter that we sent them asking for them to communicate the details of the project reported in order to be able to verify how the existence of alternatives has been evaluated — a letter that they only recently responded to with the same clichés they gave to the media.

Leaders in research are abandoning the forced swimming test but the industry is resisting

Abroad, the PETA association has been campaigning since 2018 against the use of the forced swimming test by large research companies. Between 2018 and 2021, around fifteen companies confirmed that they would no longer use these tests. When Johnson & Johnson, Roche Pharma, AstraZeneca, Sage Therapeutics, Pfizer, Bayer, or GlaxoSmithKline have gone in this direction, we have to ask why this test does not purely and simply disappear from authorised practices.

In reaction to these campaigns and their broadcast in the media, the United States lobby Speaking of Research (SoR) did not hesitate in writing a post at the beginning of 2020 to condemn ‘irresponsible journalism’, while the British lobby Understanding Animal Research (UAR) published a summary sheet in October 2020 (unpublished since but recorded on the web archive), then a new article and video in Spring 2021 on this subject. This supported the English University of Bath’s refusal to stop forced swimming tests in particular (condemned by PETA in a video published at the end of 2020, below).

Animal testing lobbies ruin their own credibility

As usual with animal testing lobbies, their content talks more about depression and good practice than the animals and the impact of this test on them. SoR maintains that animal advocates exaggerate their suffering and UAR explains that the animals are not left in the water until exhaustion and that they float naturally.

The two lobbies however carefully avoid finding out why the animals give up fighting and what this involves psychologically for them.
The summary sheet by UAR was content in saying that this test stresses the animals “in the same way as when a wild rat finds itself in a cold climate in winter”… based on a 1979 study that compares leaving rats in a cold room at 4°C for hours and making them swim five times for one minute at thirty minute intervals in 10°C water. Nothing to do with this subject, which may explain why their 2021 post just does not address the issue of the stress inflicted upon these animals.

And SoR’s credibility regarding strict methodology is not the best: the post cites a study from 2012 saying that they were making the mice swim for six minutes and the rats for fifteen minutes… while the fifteen minutes mentioned in the study relates to a ‘pre-test’ carried out the day before, and not the test itself (which lasts five minutes for the rats). When we know that there are these organisations that regularly criticise animal associations and present themselves as specialists available to the media, we are right to ask questions on their motivations…

Help us to put a stop to these tests

It is unacceptable that these tests carry on nowadays. We have no right to make these animals suffer for our own interests. Over the next few weeks, we will tell you more about the alternatives worth considering to help people suffering with depression.

You can act by supporting PETA France’s petition which asks Sanofi to stop forced swimming tests, and by soliciting major universities on Twitter and French businesses who have participated in these tests in recent years:

A request for engagement

I am asking the @PierreFabre company to lobby against forced swimming tests – rodents are not laboratory equipment! #StopForcedSwimming #EndAnimalTesting #AnimalTesting https://bit.ly/3T5XLv1 via @onevoiceanimal

I am asking the @activinside company to lobby against forced swimming tests – rodents are not laboratory equipment! #StopForcedSwimming #EndAnimalTesting #AnimalTesting https://bit.ly/3T5XLv1 via @onevoiceanimal

I am asking the @GustaveRoussy company to lobby against forced swimming tests – rodents are not laboratory equipment! #StopForcedSwimming #EndAnimalTesting #AnimalTesting https://bit.ly/3T5XLv1 via @onevoiceanimal

Development of alternative methods

I am asking @InsermIDF to lobby against forced swimming tests at the Institute of Psychiatry and Neuroscience of Paris and to develop alternative methods! #StopForcedSwimming #EndAnimalTesting #AnimalTesting https://bit.ly/3T5XLv1 via @onevoiceanimal

I am asking @INSB_CNRS and @Inserm to lobby against forced swimming tests and to develop alternative methods! #StopForcedSwimming #EndAnimalTesting #AnimalTesting https://bit.ly/3T5XLv1 via @onevoiceanimal

I am asking @IBPS_Paris to lobby against forced swimming tests and to develop alternative methods! #StopForcedSwimming #EndAnimalTesting #AnimalTesting https://bit.ly/3T5XLv1 via @onevoiceanimal

Research on prevention

I am asking @NCMagendie to lobby against forced swimming tests and to favour research on the prevention of depression! #StopForcedSwimming #EndAnimalTesting #AnimalTesting https://bit.ly/3T5XLv1 via @onevoiceanimal

I am asking @unistra to lobby against forced swimming tests and to favour research on the prevention of depression! #StopForcedSwimming #EndAnimalTesting #AnimalTesting https://bit.ly/3T5XLv1 via @onevoiceanimal

I am asking @UnivParisSaclay and @InsermIDF to lobby against forced swimming tests and to favour research on the prevention of depression! #StopForcedSwimming #EndAnimalTesting #AnimalTesting https://bit.ly/3T5XLv1 via @onevoiceanimal

Development of serious training in psychology

I am asking @AgenceRecherche to no longer support forced swimming tests and to support the development of training in psychology deserving of the 21st century! #StopForcedSwimming #EndAnimalTesting #AnimalTesting https://bit.ly/3T5XLv1 via @onevoiceanimal

I am asking @APHP to no longer support forced swimming tests and to support the development of training in psychiatry deserving of the 21st century! #StopForcedSwimming #EndAnimalTesting #AnimalTesting https://bit.ly/3T5XLv1 via @onevoiceanimal

This article is the third in a series of five on forced swimming:

Electric shocks and forced swimming in France in 2022
Forced swimming: footage
Forced swimming: the businesses moving forward and the industry that resists
Forced swimming: other approaches are possible
Forced swimming: a long-term battle (to come)

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Hainan Airlines is taking over in order to transport monkeys to American laboratories

Hainan Airlines is taking over in order to transport monkeys to American laboratories
10.08.2022
World
Hainan Airlines is taking over in order to transport monkeys to American laboratories
Animal testing

Hainan Airlines, an airline company based in China, has recommenced the transportation of monkeys for animal testing, despite having announced that they would give up these shipments in… 2012.Thanks to a revelation by an employee at the airport concerned, we know that on 9 August 2022, Hainan Airlines transported 720 long-tailed macaques from Cambodia to the United States via Beijing.

Confined alone in small compartments inside carriers, these sensitive and intelligent individuals were subjected to a long and traumatising ordeal lasting around 24 hours, with a 6-hour stopover in Beijing, as well as numerous additional hours of transportation to and from the Phnom Penh and Chicago airports. Their destination: the laboratory bench where they would be subjected, in particular, to toxicity testing…

Hainan Airline has intervened to resume the flights that Egyptair chose to stop by not renewing their contract. Join our joint campaign — Action for Primates, One Voice, and Stop Camarles — by appealing to Hainan Airlines to re-establish the ban that they claimed to have implemented in 2012. We must urge them to make the same decision as Air France, Egyptair, and Kenya Airways.

Send an email to customer.care@hnair.com for the attention of the following people:
Zhimin Ma, President, Hainan Airlines and Jun Xu, Chairman of the Board
At the same time, copy the following into the email: customerfeedback@hnair.com.
You can also write to the local offices:

Do not hesitate to tag them on Twitter also: https://twitter.com/HainanAirlines.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Faced with our appeals against digging out badgers, several prefects are yielding!

Faced with our appeals against digging out badgers, several prefects are yielding!
09.08.2022
France
Faced with our appeals against digging out badgers, several prefects are yielding!
Wildlife

In Aisne and Gard, the prefects have removed badger digging from their decrees, faced with our appeals. The first has, in an amended decree, revoked the article concerning badger digging; the second has taken out badgers and foxes. This follows several legal victories that we won for badgers, fundamentally and recently also urgently.

Photo: Claire Witham – CC BY-NC 2.0

We condemn the cruelty of digging out, a hunting technique that uses dogs to locate and keep badgers or foxes trapped at the bottom of their burrows, before hunters dig down and slaughter them mercilessly. Underground hound hunting is abominable, and leaves no way out for the animals, as we showed when we distributed our undercover investigation footage. This year, we have attacked numerous decrees allowing an extension of the period authorising hunters to indulge in ‘small game hunting’ throughout the summer, while it was already authorised during the rest of the year. Because yes, hunters demand that prefects — who do not need to be asked too much given that their decrees are often poorly justified — grant them a dispensation so that they can indulge in this macabre hobby, including during the spring and summer; in other words, whenever it suits them. Indeed, in winter, the ground is hard and they have ‘better’ things to do: shooting is permitted.

Two wins for badgers confirmed by withdrawal in Aisne and Gard!

We have just received written confirmation that, according to the Gard Prefecture, who chose to reformulate their decree to take out foxes and badgers after our appeal to the Administrative Tribunal in Nîmes*, it is now the Aisne Prefect’s turn to adapt theirs.

In Aisne, article 4 of the initial decree (the one that we were contesting) only concerns the additional period of underground hound hunting of badgers. At present, it has been completely taken out! The prefecture knew that they were going to lose and opted to repeal it. These are two victories by withdrawal. This is a win for badgers and their young, weaned but not yet independent at this time of year, but also protects the passage of other animals that are protected species with whom they often share their setts, such as wild cats, Eurasian otters, or other non-protected species such as foxes.

Administrative justice more and more often saves badgers’ lives!

These withdrawals have come in after several fundamental victories before administrative tribunals. In Saône-et-Loire, for example, we obtained a cancellation of the 2020 decree. In Gironde and Ain, we also obtained a cancellation of the 2021 prefectural decrees by the courts. But the novelty this year is that in Haute-Garonne or in Corrèze in particular, the urgent applications judge urgently suspended the decrees for the additional period of underground badger hunting with hounds after having heard our arguments. Very good news that makes us optimistic for the future.

We have filed around ten fundamental appeals this year for badgers, which will be ruled on at a later stage. Others are currently being delivered, in partnership with others.

We are inviting you to support this movement against badger digging by signing the petition on the Senate’s website in large numbers. It still needs 40,000 signatures in the next month and a half; therefore, if you have not yet participated, now is the time! You can also sign the one that you will find on our site dedicated to the footage showing the true face of underground badger hunting with hounds. Together we can state loud and clear that ‘we love badgers’!

Edit from 02 September 2022:

*Contacted by the Gard Prefecture on Friday 2 September 2022, we learnt that, finally and contrary to what they had confirmed with us, the next decree will nevertheless include foxes. Only badgers have been taken out of it. The prefecture has therefore not kept their word.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Excellent news: Egyptair has put an end to transporting monkeys for labs!

Excellent news: Egyptair has put an end to transporting monkeys for labs!
08.08.2022
World
Excellent news: Egyptair has put an end to transporting monkeys for labs!
Animal testing

One Voice and its partners, Action for Primates and Stop Camarles, have recognised Egyptair’s decision to stop sending monkeys to research laboratories, in particular subjecting them to toxicity testing (poisoning). Thanks to all those who have supported our joint campaign and have contacted Egyptair to ask the airline company to put an end to its woeful flights, again showing the strength of public opinion on this issue.

We revealed the role of Egyptair for the first time in March 2022, after having been contacted by a whistle-blower from the airport staff who was outraged at the transportation of hundreds of monkeys from Cambodia to the United States. Since then, the airline company has carried several thousand monkeys from Cambodia, Vietnam, and Mauritius to suffer and die in laboratories. But it has finally stopped! Egyptair has just confirmed in an email to PETA that they have not renewed their contract in June 2022.

The worldwide trade and transportation of monkeys for laboratories is an industry rooted in suffering and cruelty. Airline companies play a key role in this chain of suffering. Egyptair is therefore the latest to date on the list of airline companies who refuse to transport monkeys to their death, which seems to be getting longer each day after recent decisions from Air France and Kenya Airways to also put an end to their involvement in the brutal trade of lives. Despite all of this being good news, we are continuing to put pressure on the airline companies who continue to carry monkeys. There can be no rest while these shipments continue to happen.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice