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On 28 August 1986, acting on AFAS Submission, the Australian Government sent "a long questionnaire to more than 80 institutions that conduct experiments on animals". A month earlier in July, Mr Bob Kerridge of the Auckland SPCA had been officially appointed New Zealand Representative on the ANZFAS Executive. (As an interesting snippet, six years later, in July 1992, unsurprisingly the same Bob Kerridge, in a marriage of convenience with the notorious Revlon, famous for their rabbit blindings if not for their products, was recipient on behalf of the Auckland SPCA, of donations ensuing from the Revlon Look of the Year, held at the swanky Regent Hotel in Auckland. In New Truth articles of 3 and 17 July, Kerridge hints that NZAVS, which had publicly criticised the SPCA for sanitising Revlon by exchanging a camouflaging coat of paint with a fancy SPCA name-tag, in return for door-takings of these former animal torturers - as having a "jaundiced eye". Not as jaundiced quips NZAVS as the eyes of the hundreds of thousands of rabbits blinded by Revlon, which neither Mr Kerridge or his organisation lifted a finger to help, when he had the opportunity to do, through NZAVS' campaign of many bitter years' long hard struggle... and which, had it been left to Mr Kerridge and the Auckland SPCA would still be screaming in their Revlon stocks!)

Back on course it is now essential that readers fully understand the brief record of events which led one hundred years later to developments in New Zealand, and to the present-day scenario, in which, through NZAVS, we are all involved.

In 1875 the world's first anti-vivisection society was founded in Britain by Miss Frances Power Cobb and Dr George Hoggan, an English physician, who witnessing vivisection in the laboratories of Claude Bernard in Paris wrote a letter to the Morning Post which appeared on 1 February 1875. A long letter it made an historic impact on public opinion, rallying Lord Shaftesbury, Archbishop Thompson of York, Dr Walter R. Hadwen (a Gloucestershire doctor acclaimed for his campaign against compulsory inoculation, which he said could lead to the medical schools being taken over by drug companies), and many other eminent people of the day too numerous to list. These included Queen Victoria, who wrote in her own hand to Mr Gladstone the Prime Minister on 16 April 1881 as follows:

"The Queen has seen with pleasure that Mr Gladstone takes an interest in that dreadful subject of vivisection, in which she has done all she could, and she earnestly hopes that Mr Gladstone will take an opportunity of speaking strongly against a practice which is a disgrace to humanity and Christianity."

Frances Power Cobb was an abolitionist who was to devote the remaining thirty years of her life to the cause, until her death in 1904. By 1890 her Society, the National Anti-Vivisection Society, had begun making concessions, its policy for abolition replaced by demands for "reform". Frances Cobb refused to accept the change of policy and founded the Bristol and West Society (she lived in Bristol). Her Society expanded and she set up office in London and changed the name to the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection. Dr Walter Hadwen became its President. BUAV, radical, never looked back, that is until his death in 1932. We now follow the fortunes of the two New Zealand Societies which were set up expressly to combat vivisection:

BUAV (Auckland Branch) was founded in the year of Dr Hadwen's death, 1932.

By 1953 three other Branches, each independent of each other, working under the auspices of BUAV London, were also operating in Christchurch, Wellington and Dunedin. The latter three were to go defunct. In 1977 your editor, who was negotiating with London to form a Branch of BUAV in Wellington, was approached by the foundering BUAV Auckland Branch to take over its finances and mailing lists. The offer was declined. In London under BUAV General Secretary Alan Whittaker, the Finance and General Purposes Sub-Committee approved the new Wellington Branch. The date was 21 December 1978.

The international policy of BUAV was originally as follows:

"The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection opposes vivisection absolutely and entirely, and demands its complete prohibition by law, without attempts at compromise of any kind."

This policy, which is evident from the wording on its two Petitions to Parliament has been adhered to by NZAVS since its inception. The original journals of BUAV titled The Abolitionist, rejected vivisection on medical and scientific grounds, devoting much space to the error of vaccination.

By 1979 the Auckland branch of BUAV was re-formed as Save Animals From Experiments and the Wellington Branch of BUAV had disassociated from its London Director, ex-vivisector David Paterson. It became the NZ Anti-Vivisection Society.

In May 1981 SAFE brought and hosted Peter Singer for the first of several lecture tours of New Zealand. In the Australian Outcry, Winter 1981, in an article about this tour Peter Singer wrote:

"SAFE's ultimate aim is the abolition of all experiments, but as a first step it is seeking four more limited goals:

• The abolition of painful experiments.
• The abolition of non-medical experiments.
• The provision of information about the numbers and types of experiments being performed.
• The provision of money for the development of alternative methods."

This policy which should be read in conjunction with the policy of Frances Power Cobb and her BUAV shown heretobefore, was subsequently copied to all SAFE members on a plastic card. The Minister of Agriculture (bastion and stronghold of vivisection and perpetrator of the reinstitution of the live sheep trade) was to become SAFE's Patron! (And there is worse to come.)

With policies as different a chalk and cheese the rapport which had existed between the Auckland and Wellington Branches of BUAV was not to be resumed between SAFE and NZAVS. In 1982 a SAFE Petition to Parliament with over 120,000 signatures sought the following:

1. To eliminate repetitious, painful, or stressful experiments and exercises on living animals.
2. To eliminate all non-medical experiments on living animals.
3. To permit all premises where vivisection is carried out to be opened for unannounced inspections by official representatives of anti-cruelty societies.
4. To require the submission of annual reports to Parliament such reports to be made publicly available
5. To promote alternatives to vivisection.

It is essential that readers who have persevered thus far understand that all but one percent of experiments are classed as "medical". The most trivial, and even the highly criticised Draize and LD50 fall under the category of "medical experiments". Thus Clause 2 of this Petition, in addition to giving the vivisectors open slather puts "medical" experiments on a false pinnacle, when in reality it is the principal cause of human suffering and animal misery beyond our comprehension.

This, at a time when Hans Ruesch, with the aid of medical doctors was organising his Petition for Total Abolition to the Swiss Parliament, which in 1985 would win a third of the Swiss votes. And when the Italian Parliament was approving a Motion to Ban all vivisection on medical grounds, promoted by scientists and Congressmen, and to earmark the funds to other research projects.

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