That vivisection is rooted in error, and is as harmful to human beings as it is to animals is becoming increasingly recognised. ANZCCART, which was set up to ensure that such truth never reaches the public, held its Second Annual Congress in Wellington in August 1995. On 19 August the guest speaker who travelled from USA to give the Keynote Address titled: "Farm Animals in Biomedical and Agricultural Research - Conscience and Awareness", was Prof. Bernard E. Rollin. This was followed by an address titled: "The Expectations of Animal Welfare Organisations", from Glenys Oogjes, the AFAS Coordinator who tried unsuccessfully in 1985 to include NZAVS into the ANZFAS affiliation.

By now, like trembling war-horses scenting the fray, even the most artless SAFE followers should be feeling icy shivers of fear and apprehension on their hackles to see the common denominator between ANZCCART and SAFE as in its Information Sheet, July 1995, SAFE assists and upholds ANZCCART by publicising Rollin's books as "recommended reading".

At this juncture it must be recorded that those backing their subscription fees on SAFE in the hopes it heads towards the green pastures of abolition, are, in the writer's view being taken for a bizarre ride. There are now such colossal amounts of evidence proving that vivisection is a major cause of ill-health and pollution, that SAFE members should be clamouring for an urgent answer to the following puzzling question: Why SAFE with over 50 years' operations should in 1995 recommend the work of a vivisector and friend of ANZCCART, whose strongest case to the Australian Committee of Inquiry in 1984, on behalf of AFAS with whom he had a strange alliance, was that if an animal suffers pain in an experiment it should be given analgesics?

Hidden Crimes

No resume of memorable events in NZAVS' history would be complete without the mention of the uproar when NZAVS received and screened the video Hidden Crimes.

Produced in the USA by impeccable abolitionist Javier Burgos of SUPRESS (http://www.animalresearch.org/), Hans Ruesch describes the video thus:

"Hidden Crimes is the only genuinely anti-vivisection video, boycotted by the major animal welfare A/V organisations and revealing about the vivisection fraud everything that the societies are deliberately concealing."

The truth of Ruesch's words were soon to be brought home to the writer in one of her most sickening and shattering experiences of the tumultuous times of which she writes.

In Wellington at 9 a.m. on World Animal Day, 3 October 1986, the writer launched Hidden Crimes to the New Zealand public over National Radio. The film was screened all day continuously to the public in Cuba Mall in central Wellington where it attracted large crowds and a blaze of publicity. Delighted with this rare opportunity of getting favourable propaganda for the abolitionist movement the writer arrived home horrified to hear, on the self-same radio station, the voice of Adrienne Hall (formerly Carlsson) haranguing the listeners as follows:

"The public should not heed the stupidity of NZAVS for publicising overseas videos which shock and disgust by showing experiments which are not relevant to New Zealand... NZAVS should not be offending the public with horrifying pictures and stories... Overseas videos are useless... On the road to eventual abolition, small credible steps must be taken... NZAVS is turning the public away from the cause... We must be realistic... We should be looking for alternatives to animal experiments."

The following day the writer was interviewed on TVNZ to elucidate the contents of Hidden Crimes and face the music from the Censor's Office for screening the video to the public without a licence. Hall, with a perfervid disregard of NZAVS, and a lack of concern for the finer feelings of the writer, in peculiar to her exaggerated and inexplicable concern for the sensitivities of the public, which should not be shown nasty pictures, and the vivisectors who under no circumstances must be upset by criticism, her tone growing increasingly shrill, wrote a battery of letters to the papers vilifying the video and NZAVS for screening it. An extract of one of which is herewith reproduced from our files:

Letter to Wellington Evening Post
6 November 1986:

"Sir,
Making a lot of noise about vivisection overseas and behaving as if everyone will magically abandon the habits of a lifetime and reject animal exploitation are attention-getting but not at all constructive or realistic... Horrifying the public with nasty pictures and stories is not necessarily the way to sway the mainstream of opinion. Such emotional blackmail could be seen simply to cast despondency over potential allies, who then revert to the status quo with a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness. However, if on the road to abolition of animal experimentation, sensible, credible steps can be taken to build up the case against vivisection then progress will be made, albeit unacceptably slowly for many of us."
- Adrienne Hall, Spokesperson, SAFE

Readers will need no reminder that Hidden Crimes is not about "animal exploitation", but about a corrupt and dangerously invalid but lucrative industry upon which public health is based.

Hall, unrestrained, was obviously encouraged by SAFE as she continued operating in the same vein as the group's spokesperson which upheld her utterances of treason against the abolitionist principle that Society repeatedly purported to uphold.

"The number of punk teenagers joining NZAVS casts doubt on the credibility of the Society. Punk teenagers with their spiky hair and leather boots are joining the movement because it has become fashionable, not especially because of their concerns for animal welfare."
- Adrienne Hall commenting on the launch of NZAVS Petition to Abolish Vivisection, in a newspaper article in Wellington Dominion 9 May 1987, also in the Otago Daily Times, NZ Herald, Auckland, the Waikato Times and other newspapers.

(N.B. Nowhere on the Prayer of this Petition or its Submissions is there reference to "animal welfare" , but Hall perpetuates the myth. Hall did not support the Petition or attend the march but once again set herself up as critic from which platform she could denounce NZAVS Petition and its supporters.)

The casual and inexperienced observer of those times would no doubt have summed Hall up as an exceptional if fiery champion of animal rights. A more astute and perceptive onlooker, noting her habitual attacks on NZAVS may have attributed them merely to spiteful breaches of standard etiquette by an unstable and brash zealot who was in danger of becoming deranged. Neither would have been correct. Hall's meticulous scrutiny and minuscule examination of NZAVS' affairs, the monumental and exhaustive time-consuming strategy she applied to her attempts (through the disproportionate authority vested in her by the organisation she served), to at least discredit, and at best bring about NZAVS' downfall, required a full-time application of intelligence, forethought and cunning. Until she receives proof to the contrary the writer settles for the logical explanation described by Ruesch in his CIVIS Bullet-in Nr. 2 (http://www.bava.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/CIVISBulletin2pt01.html), in which he warns against, and describes the tactics of, individuals who use their powers of authority in the animal welfare A/V movement in a subversive campaign to ensure that any attempt to effect total abolition of vivisection, as distinct from interim measures is opposed.

If the three categories mentioned could be argued, it can never be argued that addled or otherwise no vivisector or representative of that industry could have improved on the service performed by it by Adrienne Hall speaking on behalf of SAFE on World Animal Day, 3 October 1986. For that the vivisectors had to wait another nine years. In a necessary and, we trust, interesting detour the writer will not only explain how this was accomplished, but also guarantees the reader will not be disappointed if sufficiently persevering to bear with her as the scene temporarily returns to Parliament at the time of NZAVS Petition to Abolish the LD50 Test.