ANIMAL RESEARCH T A K E S LIVES
- Humans and Animals BOTH Suffer
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Animal Research Saves Lives takes the trouble to point out that most animals used in this country's vivisection laboratories are "specifically-bred" rats, mice, hamsters and guinea-pigs. This indicates that ARSL believes the purpose-bred rodent is less worthy, or of less importance, than the valued pedigree cat or dog or the loved family mongrel and therein the glaring derelict intellectual and moral inadequacies and deficiencies of the publishers are exposed. The astute reader will have instantly recognised that ARSL is not merely failing to keep pace with the enlightened progress and attitudes of other world communities, but that in both word and deed its producers are stagnant.
These days no modern community would admit to sending to vivisection laboratories the abandoned animals which find themselves in shelters and pounds. Such institutions, they state, were designed as sanctuaries to protect animals, return them safely to their guardians, find them homes, or as a last resort put them to sleep humanely. It, the modern community, is aware that city pounds were not set up as clearing houses, or warehouses for vivisection laboratories.
Pound seizure is now prohibited in England, Denmark, Holland, Sweden, Switzerland. It is against the law in 14 of the American States and illegal in 54 out of 58 counties in California.
(Fur' n Feathers, U.S.A., February 1991.)
In Great Britain the National Greyhound Racing Club said that "Anyone supplying animals for experiments will be banned from racing."
(News of the World, October 28 1990)
The publishers of ARSL glorify and advocate the use of greyhounds and NZAVS has evidence about the sale to laboratories of greyhounds who can no longer run fast enough to win money for their owners and breeders.
It is re-affirmed that NZAVS, as part of the new abolitionist movement, bases its objection to vivisection on the ground that it is wrong methodology and a scientific error, and that the origin of the animals, or the numbers used, is not on the agenda of the Society's campaign to introduce the abolition of vivisection in New Zealand.
That official New Zealand attitudes are obsolete and outdated was confirmed on Radio New Zealand News, February 19 1991, when startled listeners learned that European purchasers are turning against New Zealand products because of this country's failure to keep abreast of modern animal welfare requirements. Amongst other issues the speaker mentioned the live sheep shipment tragedies and the British and European consumers' increasing intolerance of New Zealand's agricultural practices. Interestingly the message came not from an anti-vivisectionist or a member of the animal rights movement but from Professor Don Broom, a respected visiting scientist to Ruakura Agricultural Laboratory. "In Great Britain, many people", said Professor Broom, "are becoming vegetarian in protest at New Zealand's inability, or reluctance to keep abreast of the times."
(Similarly, though an increasing number of countries have banned circuses which include animal acts, this archaic and brutal form of "entertainment" is still upheld by law in New Zealand.)