Animal Aid

The process to revise the law governing vivisection across the whole of the European Union has reached another critical moment. The draft Directive - having passed through the European Parliament - is now being re-shaped by the Council of Ministers, which is made up of ministers from every Member State. It is vital that the influence of pro-vivisection industry lobbyists is countered by voices that speak out in defence of animals and for modern, cruelty-free research methods.

Animal Aid continues to oppose all animal experiments on moral and scientific grounds but abolition through the EU is simply not possible at this time. Right now, it is best to register opposition to a handful of particularly worrying provisions in the draft Directive and to support measures that would have an especially positive impact.

The animals need you to write to Home Office Minister, Meg Hillier and to the Rapporteur (the leader) of the European Agriculture Committee, Elisabeth Jeggle, as soon as possible. Letters are far more effective than emails. Please address each of the following key issues:

• The European Parliament opposed a ban on the capture of wild primates for use in laboratory breeding programmes. The ban, which was called for by the European Commission in the original draft Directive, must be re-imposed by the Council of Ministers.
• Similarly, the Commission wanted to restrict the use of primates to experiments directed at preventing and exploring 'life-threatening or debilitating' conditions. But the European Parliament voted for monkeys also to be used for ‘basic’ curiosity-driven research. There must be strict limits on primate research.
• The European Parliament has voted to allow millions of animal ‘procedures’ to go ahead throughout the EU each year without the need to seek formal approval. Only ‘moderate’, ‘severe’ and primate experiments would need authorisation from a central authority, leaving an estimated 4.3 million experiments to proceed as long as the central authority is ‘notified’. All experiments must receive formal authorisation from a central authority.
• The European Parliament, against the wishes expressed in the original European Commission draft Directive, voted for vivisectors to be allowed to subject animals to ‘severe and prolonged suffering’. The Council of Ministers must outlaw this level of suffering.
• A positive measure introduced by the Parliament is ‘biannual thematic reviews’ of primate and other research. These will be systematic assessments of the value of various kinds of animal experiments, with a view to outlawing those judged to be useless. The biannual thematic reviews must be supported.

Please write to:

Meg Hillier
Animal Scientific Procedures Division
Home Office
4th Floor Seacole
2 Marsham Street
London SW1P 4DF

Elisabeth Jeggle
Parlement européen
Bât. Altiero Spinelli
10E209
60, rue Wiertz / Wiertzstraat 60
B-1047 Bruxelles/Brussel