Animal versions of Hitler's camps???

[Gazellianaimee]

I recieved an email containing this today: An absolutely vital vote on the future of vivisection is taking place this coming Tuesday, March 31. The vote relates to the new Directive that will govern how animal research is conducted across the European Union – the UK included – and will replace the current rules, which are 23 years old. Tuesday's vote will be by the European parliament's Agricultural Committee, which has the biggest say of all the parliament's committees on how the new Directive will look. On Tuesday, its members will be voting on a set of proposals produced by the committee's 'rapporteur' – an English MEP called Neil Parish. Parish's proposals have alarmed animal protection bodies throughout Europe for the way they would seriously weaken existing animal protection measures. They would, for example, permit animals to be subjected to 'severe, prolonged suffering'. And, instead of providing additional protection for primates – which is what the European Commission has called for – he wants monkeys to be used for curiosity-driven research that, for example, involves the infliction of severe brain damage, the withholding of food and water, and holding brain-damaged animals in restraint chairs, while they are forced to press icons on a computer screen over and over again. Please send an email TODAY or TOMORROW to the eight UK members of the Agricultural Committee. Their addresses are as follows: - jim.allister@europarl.europa.eu - james.nicholson@europarl.europa.eu - neil.parish@europarl.europa.eu - brian.simpson@europarl.europa.eu - alyn.smith@europarl.europa.eu - struan.stevenson@europarl.europa.eu - robert.sturdy@europarl.europa.eu - jeffrey.titford@europarl.europa.eu Now, i completely understand that in certain circumstances there are occassions where experiments on animals are beneificial for medical purposes. However, for one this does not sound like it will have any medical application, and i really cannot see how this will drastically improve out understanding. I understand that people want to learn things, however, starving a monkey utterly of food...why??? You are not going to learn about what any specific nutrients effect have upon them, you are just going to see what you know will happen, muscle will disappear then fat, somewhere along the line kidneys will go, and organs, and of course, before that immune system drastically reduced. And, why on earth would you want to inflict brain damage???? Yes, there is a lot that we do not know about the brain, but you will only learn about the state of the brain damage, as in what it causes, and in most instances that can be observed in people/monkeys who have already got that problem. I suppose they might want to test methods of improving the brain damage, but from what i know of the subject (admittedly it is not loads), there are not many things at all that could be helped by any significant degree by doing this. Perhaps someone who knows more about it could explain differently. And pinning brain damage monkeys to a chair, and forcing them to do things with a computer. I am pretty sure that anything learned from this would be just for 'curiosities sake', giving very little help for anybody or anything. However, if anybody has any thoughts on this, please do contradict me! I would really like to hear some verification that an MEP, someone who one would hope is fairly ok, thinks ok etc etc etc really does deserve/is of the right mind to be in that position (unfortunately, my limited hearing range seems to imply that too many such people are not doing good jobs) and is not going to create animal versions of Hitler's camps.

[butterfingersbimbo]

omg that's horrendous, I'm going to email tomoro.

[Charlottie]

Omg that is terrible!!
What do you put on the email =s??

[quilson_mc_spike]

same as above?

[vonnie]

I see the EU as representing a serious threat to animal welfare. Ok, things are far from perfect in this country, but our laws and regulations are pretty progressive compared to most places - particularly when it comes to farm animal welfare .

I really worry that EU-wide laws will just dumb down what we already had, and this certainly proves the point.

This would be a real step backwards. We should be using scientific advances to find real, reliable (because other animals are not necessarily a reliable model for humans) alternatives to animal testing, not increasing the testing,.

[Blackmelo]

the EU aren't a threat to animal welfare. The european commission and parliament have a team of thousands of very intelligent people working for them and generally come up with very good decisions to benefit the whole of the EU. Of course not everyone can be pleased when it comes to decisions but overall I am very happy with the EU's rulings. I am confident they would never allow such a proposal proposed by this Parish twat.
So nobody has a problem with this parish guy representing england to have come up with this ludicrous idea?
You have a problem with the EU instead? Please explain, especially when they decline parish's proposal on Tuesday.

Just out of curiosity Gazellianaimee, where did you hear about this? I won't just go interfering without knowing a bit more about this matter.

[sandmatt]

I dont like the EU their rules seem to apply for some countries and not others.. we as britain have gained nothing out of it, and i hope our animal welfare laws dont drop in standard because of them.