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3. To permit all premises where vivisection is carried out to be opened for unannounced inspections by official representatives of anti-cruelty societies.

Our comment:

That the establishments are there is a crime. That animals are cruelly-bred and obtained and kept awaiting the vivisectors' whim is a crime. No true anti-vivisectionist would ever be allowed inside a vivisection laboratory and this clause contains a wide opportunity for graft. The NZAVS is totally opposed to the whole concept of vivisection laboratories and should the animals' quarters be clean and adequate this would in no way alter our policy.

4. To require the submission of annual reports to Parliament outlining all the details of vivisection in New Zealand. All such reports to be made publicly available.

Our comment:

This would require large armies of people, noting, sifting, collating, preparing, typing - the details of a rotten and obsolete system. A system which in the UK has broken down. It is a system which entails the setting up of vast government departments - a burden on the taxpayer and would add to the total national vivisection outlay. The money would be best spent on the introduction of already available alternatives to the use of living animals.

5. To promote alternatives to vivisection.

Our comment:

The alternative to vivisection is abolition of vivisection. The term promote is too loose. If vivisection laboratories were closed down there would be funds enough for the Government to switch to humane alternative methods of research. It should never be up to the individual to pay for the alternatives. Many alternatives are available but suppressed because of the high cost of changing systems. Similarly - it is not compulsory for alternatives to be used when they become available.

Summing up...

This is indeed a vivisectors' charter. It will be popular with the medical faction, the veterinarians and those working with Government grants on procedures flying under the flag of medical experiments. Because of this it will be popular with the politicians who cannot afford to make enemies - with the medical men, or the veterinarians - or with the animal welfare bodies. It will be popular with certain animal welfare organisations who purport to stand for the rights of animals yet claim that drugs and medicines must be tested on animals. It will float through the House because it will hurt no-one. Yet it will put the animals right where the vivisectors want them - that is in their power.

The petition is based on the assumption that vivisection is to be an ongoing institution and fails to take into account the atrocities that it will instantly legalise. Neither does it take into account the growing militancy in many overseas countries as animal liberationists rise against such legislation as this very petition to Parliament seeks to implement.

"Compromise means betrayal"

Says Jean Pink, Head of Animal Aid, Great Britain's most active anti-vivisection society:

"To categorise experiments as medical, non-medical, essential or inessential, is completely to miss the point... since the issue at stake is the suffering of the animals and not the purpose of the experiment..."