Archives: News

Glue-trap hunting: the Court of Justice of the European Union comes to the rescue of birds!

Glue-trap hunting: the Court of Justice of the European Union comes to the rescue of birds!

Glue-trap hunting: the Court of Justice of the European Union comes to the rescue of birds!
17.03.2021
Glue-trap hunting: the Court of Justice of the European Union comes to the rescue of birds!
Hunting

We were at the Court of Justice of the European Union on Thursday, November 19, 2020 to hear the submissions of the assistant public prosecutor following our complaint to Europe as part of our appeals to the Council of State on the 2018 and 2019 glue-trap hunting in France. Today, Wednesday March 17, the European Court handed down its decision, and it goes our way: it supports the birds! They needed it so badly.

End of playtime for blackbird and thrush gluers!

A great victory! Following in the footsteps of Spain, Malta and Cyprus, where the tradition of glue-trap hunting was also firmly established, the European Court of Justice has ruled that glue-trap hunting must come to an end in France too, and not just by reducing the quota to zero.

According to the European Court of Justice,

“A Member State cannot authorize a method of capturing birds which results in by-catches if it is likely to cause other than negligible damage to the species concerned. The traditional nature of a method of capturing birds, such as hunting with glue, is not in itself sufficient to establish that no other satisfactory solution can be substituted for it”.

“For the hunters who had fun gluing robins, blackbirds and song thrushes to eat them, it’s the end of playtime! This magnificent victory shows just how important it is never to give in to this lobby, which is so entrenched in its cruel and destructive practices. The fight for birds is not over, they remain threatened by other traditional hunts. We’ll be there!”

Muriel Arnal, President of One Voice

As we’ve explained many times over the years, hunting with glue is cruel, because the birds are stuck to the branches where, in panic, they struggle, plucking feathers and breaking limbs. It is also non-selective, meaning that it traps all birds that land, and not just those of the species that the hunters want to capture to make them endure a life in captivity as decoy-birds.

A “cultural importance” that just doesn’t measure up

The Court did not follow the opinion of the assistant public prosecutor. For the European Court, “It is very likely […] that the birds captured will suffer irreversible damage, the birdlime being, by its very nature, liable to damage the plumage of all the birds captured.”

In this decision, the gluing process is clearly condemned. Regional tradition is therefore not in itself a criterion for derogating from the European Birds Directive. Capture with glue damages the plumage of the birds captured, and is therefore prohibited. The EU Court of Justice does not require certainty: the very fact that this hunting method can kill or cripple them is sufficient. In the end, the technique is condemned as much as the tradition.

We’ll soon be before the Council of State again

We said it was up to the hunters to prove that glue-trap hunting did not harm birds. In the end, the hunters’ argument that they were releasing birds of non-targeted species was swept aside… Because, in fact, glue does not make any selection between birds! So there is real hope for birds affected by other types of hunting, particularly traditional hunting!

Now it’s up to the Council of State, a national jurisdiction, to take a stand.

Read the press release from the Court of Justice of the European Union

Silabe, an establishment within the University of Strasbourg, at the heart of the international trade in monkeys for animal experimentation

Silabe, an establishment within the University of Strasbourg, at the heart of the international trade in monkeys for animal experimentation

Silabe, an establishment within the University of Strasbourg, at the heart of the international trade in monkeys for animal experimentation
09.03.2021
France
Silabe, an establishment within the University of Strasbourg, at the heart of the international trade in monkeys for animal experimentation
Animal testing

One Voice has seen information according to which more than a thousand long-tailed macaques have been imported year after year and forwarded to our neighbours elsewhere in Europe.

Photo: Cruelty Free International/SOKO-Tierschutz

France at the heart of a secretive and cruel trade

For many years France has been, via the ‘Silabe Platform’, a staging post for – and moreover a place for experiments on – thousands of primates from Mauritius and Vietnam en route to laboratories in Germany, the United Kingdom and Italy, such as Accelera, Aptuit, Bayer AG, Covance and Merck, where they spend the rest of their sad lives subjected to experiments.

It is likely that some of the monkeys also undergo tests in France, after very probably arriving at Roissy in the holds of Air France planes. Silabe has already been at the heart of controversies, revelations, demonstrations and campaigns, in particular by other French associations, which had found themselves up against a brick wall[1].

Silabe used to be run by a private association benefiting from ministerial funds and controlled by the University of Strasbourg. It is now part of the University and takes the form of a national public educational establishment of a scientific, cultural and professional nature. The primates involved are often very young. Many of those from Mauritius are barely a year and a half old. Small vulnerable babies, weighing about two kilos are sent in ‘batches’, as cargo in transit crates, far from the nurturing and protection of their mothers. The length of the journeys and the conditions of transport are terribly distressing for the infant monkeys : stress, fear etc. And what is waiting for them? Being restrained on cold tiled laboratory benches, having holes cut or drilled into their skulls, electrodes planted into their brains, or having chemicals and drugs forced into their bodies, poisoning …. As monkeys are very valuable to researchers, the survivors are sometimes sold to other laboratories for yet more years of experiments. Finally, euthanasia or slaughter awaits them, with no glimpse of another life, no retirement.

A reduction in the number of animals used in research: utopia?

European law stipulates that primates used for scientific purposes should come exclusively from breeding establishments or colonies maintained with no introductions of animals taken from the wild; This applies as from 10 November 2022 for all the members of the EU, including France. It, therefore, strengthens the rules applying to the trade in monkeys. But who is going to monitor it, especially in the countries where the animals are captured and bred for export?

The European regulations also stipulate that fewer animal procedures must be carried out in research in general. But what is likely to happen?

The continuing lack of transparency

Moreover Silabe is only one stage in these transfers, among so many others. Year after year the figures for the use of animals in research in France stagnate at an unbelievable level! Looking into the issue there is an obvious lack of transparency.

Another question that needs to be answered : although the trade in primates from Vietnam and Mauritius to Europe is allowed, why is France in general and the Silabe platform in particular a staging post?

We have written to Frédérique Vidal, the Minister of Research, to bring this matter to her attention. We and our partner Action for Primates (United Kingdom) need your support! Please join us in writing a letter to the Embassies of Mauritius and Vietnam to bring an end to the exporting of monkeys to France for pointless experiments. And please sign our petition for total transparency about animals used in experiments, the financing of non-animal alternatives and the systematic and exclusive use of such alternatives where they exist!

[1] Campaigns and demonstrations