03/31/06 Coalition Against Vivisection
Animal Friends became a member of the European Coalition to End Animal Experiments
After last year's affair about the illegal experiments at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in Zagreb, which are still under investigation at Zagreb District Attorney’s Office, and which resulted with stop of the experiments conducted on the 32 beagle dogs and their homing, a question about the insufficiency of legislation and lack of supervision on animal experiments has risen in Croatia. According to figures Croatian media published in 2001, over 20,000 animals (mice, rats, rabbits, dogs, cats, so called farm animals, and other animals) are being used for experiments in Croatia every year, but the real figures are considerably significantly higher.
Thanks to activities of disclosure of senseless and unnescesary animal experiments and the informing of the public about animal torturing in the name of beauty and science, Animal Friends last year participated in a conference in London as observer, whilst last week in the meeting in Vienna became a member organization of The European Coalition to End Animal Experiments – ECEAE.
ECEAE is the biggest animal protection organization that joined their efforts in campaigning for total abolition of animal experimentation. Founded in 1990 by a presiding organization British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV), today ECEAE represents member organizations from the whole European Union and international partners and draws together organizations with a range of legislative, scientific and political expertise.
Members of the Coalition oppose to using of animals in experiments from scientific and ethical reasons, determined to use only non-violent methods to end all animal experiments and promote modern research methods, which do not include animals. ECEAE believes that animal experimentation is a very deficient scientific method and that animals have a right to get our respect and compassion, which experiments deny them.
Animal Friends hopes that the Croatian Government and representatives of the Parliament will support the positive regulations about animal experiments from the Draft of proposal for the Animal Protection Act of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management, like the introduction of an Ethical Committee institution for approvment of experiments and banning animal experiments for the purpose of testing cosmetics, final products or their ingredients.
Apart from an ongoing educational program, Animal Friends, as part of the Coalition, will direct its future activities mainly on urging Croatian cosmetics companies to the adopt Humane Cosmetics Standard (HCS), the only international criteria for labelling cosmetics and toiletry products with "Not tested on animals" label. Another aim is to educate scientific institutions and universities about alternatives to animal testing and to arouse the interest of scientists to use as many as possible non-animal methods of testing, which are reliable and safe for human health and do not cause animal suffering.