Report - new investigation footage and action on the ground: to stop breeding and testing on dogs, One Voice has redoubled its efforts!
One Voice is standing up to breeding farms and testing on dogs in France and in the European Union.
At the end of the summer, One Voice published an in-depth report on dogs in animal testing in France (and its ramifications in the European Union and elsewhere in the world). This report of over thirty pages and the bibliography provided is accompanied by unpublished footage from the Mézilles and Gannat breeding farms, currently owned by Marshall BioResources, the New York giant in ‘bio-resources’.Rallies near the breeding farms have been set and implemented by local One Voice activist branches, as they do every year at the end of the summer, on 1 and 2 September in Gannat, and 2 September in Auxerre.
Deep-rooted public opinion in favour of ethical science
Three quarters of French people are against animal testing (IPSOS/One Voice survey, April 2023). This figure rose to 85% regarding tests carried out on dogs. However, our country is home to Yonne and Allier, two industrial breeding farms for thousands of beagles and golden retrievers – animals that are particularly gentle and friendly – destined exclusively to suffer then die in conditions that we would not even wish on our worst enemy. The One Voice team obtained, in 2019 and 2021 respectively, a cancellation for their expansion.
The requirement for transparency leads by example, with the public’s support
One Voice, cutting edge on the subject of animal testing in France since the end of the 1990s, has also made a site analysing the official data available and invites the public to sign their petition that is in particular in favour of closing these two dog breeding farms. The association is asking that these experiments causing ‘severe’ suffering for dogs stop, but also for the development of replacement methods (meaning without animals), and brings other key measures such as obtaining true transparency, because this environment has a rare lack of transparency, and State services are more than unwilling to hand over inspection reports that are public.
Constant work alongside our partners in Europe, because mass-production and legislation goes beyond French borders
By supporting the European Citizens’ Initiative against testing cosmetics on animals, One Voice has managed to get the European Commission to commit for a progressive decree on animal testing. Even more recently, the association took over a collective campaign showing the conditions of international transfers of dogs in the hold of an aeroplane via Denmark — conditions that they had already reported on in the past.
L’expérimentation animale et les chiens
To find out more about dogs in animal testing:
Every year, there are almost 20,000 uses of dogs in laboratories in the European Union, and this is mainly for toxicity tests for medications and in research into diseases.
More than half of these uses relate to new dogs imported or ‘produced’ for experiments, while the rest are made up of dogs that are reused from one year to the next. Most of them come from specialised EU breeding farms, but almost a third of them are imported from the United States or elsewhere.
France is among the biggest consumers of dogs, and for tests causing the most suffering
Almost all of these dogs are beagles, but individuals from other breeds (particularly golden retrievers) can be tested on. France and the United Kingdom are the biggest ‘consumers’ of them in Europe, with more than 4000 procedures per year each. Germany follows them closely but has noted a progressive reduction in the number of uses since 2015.
By nature, animal testing causes suffering. France stands out in Europe with a high proportion of very painful or very stressful procedures.
We invite you to read our report on dogs in animal testing, to sign our petition, and to watch our investigation videos on the French dog breeding farms that are among the biggest in Europe. You are also invited to participate in the rallies at the start of September to ask for the closure of these miserable places, as well as a paradigm shift on a scientific level.
Translated from the French by Joely Justice