HELP ANIMALS IN EU LABORATORIES

In 1986 the Council adopted Directive 86/609/EEC on the protection of animals used for experimental and other scientific purposes. The Directive seeks to improve the controls on the use of laboratory animals, sets minimum standards for housing and care as well as for the training of personnel handling animals and supervising the experiments. It also aims at reducing the numbers of animals used for experiments by requiring that an animal experiment should not be performed when an alternative method exists, and by encouraging the development and validation of alternative methods to replace animal methods. The latter served as the basis for the Commission to set up ECVAM, the European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods, in 1991.

The wording of the Directive follows international Conventions. Therefore, a significant number of its provisions are open to interpretation, and the style of some provisions is more political rather than regulatory in nature. The Directive does also not include ethical review processes or compulsory authorisation of experiments. Furthermore, the Directive does not explicitly mention the concept of the 3Rs - Reduction, Refinement and Replacement (Russel and Burch 1959), which is a generally recognised approach to minimise the use of laboratory animals.

In recent years, it has become increasingly apparent that the Directive needs to be revised in order to promote improvements in the welfare of laboratory animals and to further foster the development of alternative methods. Since 1986 important progress has been made in science and new techniques have become available, such as use of transgenic animals, xenotransplantation and cloning. These require specific attention, which the current Directive does not provide for.

Finally, the EU Treaty now formally recognises the welfare requirements of animals. The protocol on protection and welfare of animals, annexed to the Treaty of Amsterdam, provides that "In formulating and implementing the Community's agriculture, transport, internal market and research policies, the Community and the Member States shall pay full regard to the welfare requirements of animals, while respecting the legislative or administrative provisions and customs of the Member States relating in particular to religious rites, cultural traditions and regional heritage".

More than 12 million animals die each year in research and testing laboratories across the European Union (source: Fifth Report on the Statistics on the Number of Animals used for Experimental and other Scientific Purposes in the Member States of the European Union). This is because the 20-year-old EU animal experiments directive is out of date.

In 2007 the Commission adopted Recommendation 2007/526/EC on revised guidelines for the accommodation and care of animals used for experimental and other scientific purposes. The Recommendation, which was adopted on 18 June 2007, will align EU legislation with the revised Council of Europe guidelines (Appendix A of Convention ETS 123), on accommodation and care of laboratory animals. This Recommendation reflects the current best practice and the latest scientific knowledge on good husbandry and care of experimental animals. It assists Member States in the implementation of Article 5 of Directive 86/609/EEC on the protection of animals used for experimental and other scientific purposes.
 
Now, the EU Commissioner for Research, Janez Potocnik doesn%u2019t want support a ban on the use of great apes in experiments.
We need a comprehensive revision of Directive 86/609EEC which is by now out of date since it was adopted more than 20 years ago. The objective is also to ensure that the Three Rs principle %u2013 Replacement, Reduction and Refinement %u2013 is rigorously applied throughout all animal breeding, housing and use for scientific purposes.
The EU Commissioner responsible for Environment, in the SPEECH/08/349,  said  %u201Cthat given the current state of scientific knowledge, the use of a limited number of other species of non-human primates is still unavoidable for a number of vital research programmes. This is especially true of research on severe global diseases. It would therefore be premature to set a timetable with fixed deadlines to phase out all use of non-human primates%u201D.

Animals in laboratories are shocked, infected, burned, poisoned, shot, surgically mutilated and subjected to many other types of torture in order to test all sorts of products.
Diseases that are artificially induced in animals in a laboratory are never identical to those that occur naturally in human beings. And because animal species differ from one another in many biologically significant ways, it becomes even more unlikely that animal research will yield results that will be correctly interpreted and applied to the human condition in a meaningful way.
Please, send a mail and ask the Commissioner Potocnik to support the new legislation.
Vivisection is scientific fraud. Animal experimentation does not make sense.

Emails will also be sent to the following European Commissioners email addresses:

leonor.ribeiro-da-silva@ec.europa.eu, Mariann.Fischer-Boel@ec.europa.eu, jose-manuel.barroso@ec.europa.eu, johannes.laitenberger@ec.europa.eu, nathalie.davies@ec.europa.eu, cab-figel@ec.europa.eu, cab-grybauskaite-commissaire@ec.europa.eu, cab-kallas-web-feedback@ec.europa.eu, cab-orban-contact@ec.europa.eu, cab-piebalgs-archives@ec.europa.eu, cab-rehn-web-feedback@ec.europa.eu, cabinet-borg@ec.europa.eu, cabinet-huebner@ec.europa.eu, charlie.mc-creevy@ec.europa.eu, eliana.garces-tolon@ec.europa.eu, franco.frattini@ec.europa.eu, gerassimos.thomas@ec.europa.eu, guenter.verheugen@ec.europa.eu, janez.potocnik@ec.europa.eu, joseph.hennon@ec.europa.eu, laszlo.kovacs@ec.europa.eu, neelie.kroes@ec.europa.eu, patrick.child@ec.europa.eu, peter.mandelson@ec.europa.eu, philippe.brunet@ec.europa.eu, sabine.weyand@ec.europa.eu, stavros.dimas@ec.europa.eu, v.spidla@ec.europa.eu, viviane.reding@ec.europa.eu, jose-manuel.barroso@ec.europa.eu, sg-web-president@cec.eu.int