New Zealand

As mentioned elsewhere, (http://www.nzavs.org.nz/mobilise/30/2.html) no NZ animal rights or environmental group supported NZAVS Petition to Abolish Vivisection, though we regularly receive appeals from other organisations seeking assistance with their campaigns. Though NZAVS is a specialist concentrating all its resources on the single issue we do our best where possible to help others.

• The Prime Minister;
• the Minister of the Environment;
• the Minister of Conservation;
• and the Minister of Fisheries

NZAVS regrets having to report that its willingness to cooperate with and uphold the campaigns of other groups on their issues... was not reciprocated with our petition.

Canada

News update of the Petition to Abolish Vivisection in Canada organised by the Animal Defence and Anti-Vivisection Society of British Columbia (http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/Villa/8944/).

As this Society, situated in British Columbia, could not canvass the entire ten provinces of Canada it appealed to the animal rights groups in the nine other provinces for assistance. Mrs S. Daskalova de Banou, president of ADAV reported to NZAVS on 16 May 1991 that not one group would lend its support to the petition. She writes:

"It is bad news regarding our Petition. It has been squashed in its tracks. Not enough signatures could be gathered from the ten provinces across Canada as our group was the only one active in promoting the Petition. It is very depressing; however, we must pick up the pieces and carry on with our campaign against vivisection."

NZAVS sympathises with its colleagues in Canada who have suffered this great disappointment... once again abolitionists have been betrayed by those who vociferously cry out for "animal rights".

Australia

Peter Singer's Second Edition of Animal Liberation is now being lauded by animal rights groups. Mobilise! fans will recollect that back in 1984 Singer, along with a clutch of the world's most ardent pro-vivisectionists made Recommendations on Animal Experimentation to the Australian Senate Enquiry into Animal Welfare. (One glimpse of those unbelievable "recommendations" decided NZAVS not to join the newly-formed Australia and New Zealand Federation of Animal Societies (ANZFAS) in spite of pressure to do so.)

The NZ Government is circulating widely policy ensuing from those recommendations. Had NZAVS joined ANZFAS it would now be opposing policies for which it was responsible! About vivisection Peter Singer wrote in Animal Rights Intl, November 1988:

"We must not lock ourselves into positions so extreme they have no hope of convincing anyone... Indeed in my view it would not even be rational for a Government to abolish all animal experimentation while its population eats the corpses of factory-farmed animals."

Peter Singer does not mention in this eulogy of vivisection... the thousands of parents of vaccine-damaged babies, the Debendox victims, the ongoing survey of Depo-Provers casualties, the thousands crippled, killed and damaged with tranquilisers, arthritis pills, oral contraceptives and the like. Or the thousands of honest doctors who say vivisection must go immediately because it is dangerous and fraudulent.

By contrast, Prof. Pietro Croce, MD in his book 'Vivisection or Science: a Choice to Make', first published April 1991, gives a whole page to the following words:

"The first nation that abolishes vivisection will be to the world what Renaissance Italy was."

Great Britain

On a lighter note, Elsie van der Steen, an abolitionist active with the pen, sends us the following story from Bristol.

The scene is set at an open day at the meat experimental laboratory (where animals are starved and stressed before being killed to test the variances the adrenalin hormone secretion has on the meat).

Bristol activists disguised as respectable interested members of the public, were studiously shown around the laboratory (trying a few doors to test the locks on the way) before leaving quietly.

Once outside, changed into white coats, took positions in the entrance to the car-park where they handed out their own leaflets. It was a fine day and the car-park was crowded. The public thought they were vets, were very deferential to the white coats, asking many questions, showed great surprise when they heard the blunt truth about what goes on in such laboratories.

All went well until a real vet took a leaflet... Flabbergasted , he took fright, rushed down the lane, yelling... "The Anti's are here!"