Bad Politics

The British Government has made it very clear that they are the friends of animal research institutes and multinational pharmaceutical companies. This can be seen in the way they have waved the rules and regulations in planning procedures, company law and banking rules, amongst others, to the favour of these wealthy and powerful institutes. They have even changed the law on numerous occasions to make lawful protest against such institutions more difficult.

The message they give out is very clear � if you have money and influence then the British Government will do all they can to help you. But if you are a powerless victim of these institutions then they will turn their back on you, and if you try to defend and stop the suffering of those victims, they will throw everything they can at you to try to stop you.

It has long been the aim of the British Government to turn the UK into the leading scientific research country, with no thought for the animals who will be the victims of much of this research. The fact that there has never even been an independent review of the validity of vivisection, and that they are reluctant to let one happen, should set the alarm bells ringing. If they truly believed that torturing animals to death in the pursuit of scientific research actually worked, why are they so reluctant for such a review to take place?

Labour Lies

The Labour government in the UK came to power in 1997 promising a clean break from the years of Conservative rule and a new era of accountable government which kept its promises. Among the promises on animal issues, they had pledged to reduce and eventually end animal experiments. However, once in power the Blair government came under the influence of the pharmaceutical and biotech industries.

A pledge to establish a Royal Commission to investigate the validity of vivisection and professional malpractice within the industry was shelved and no convincing alternative was offered to take its place. The reneging on promises did not end there.

Evidence provided by undercover investigations to demonstrate the extent of malpractice, extreme animal suffering and shoddy science behind the walls of vivisection laboratories has been ignored by the Home Office.

Instead, faced with this catalogue of irrefutable evidence, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) asked the government to organise a pro-vivisection advertising campaign; this, naturally, to be funded by us, the taxpayers.

It was also the DTI that opened up an account with the Bank of England on behalf of Huntingdon Life Sciences, a company exposed time and again for shocking animal cruelty, as well as for falsifying records of experiments on animals and thus putting human life at risk as well over a period of decades.

Not only have they broken their promises regarding animal testing, but under the Labour Government the number of animal experiments have actually increased for the first time in almost 30 years, the largest total of procedures since 1994, meaning under this government the number of experiments annually is larger now than when they came to power. And this trend is on the increase as transgenic animals become increasingly popular for researchers to use.

Much of this was a result of the heavy influence of one figure, an ex junior minister within the DTI, the ex science minister David (now Lord) Sainsbury. Sainsbury, a billionaire who has extensive investments in the bio-tech industry, has donated over �11.5 million to the Labour party, which in effect bought him a life peerage and the influential role of science minister until he resigned just a few months after being questioned by police in the �cash for peerages� inquiry.

Sainsbury, a Cambridge graduate, used his huge influence with Tony Blair, an Oxford graduate to try to push through the plans for more laboratories in the UK in defiance of democracy and public opinion. Now Gordon Brown is also seen to be a keen supporter of the wealthy and powerful pharmaceutical and medical research industries.

Oxford University�s new animal torture lab is only in existence because of the money and expertise given to the project by the British Government from tax payers� money. The university only had to pay the core cost, everything else comes straight out of the public purse, despite the fact that so many people are against such blatant misuse of public money going to fund animal suffering.

Time and time again we have seen that those in power do little for the animals and that it is the duty of right thinking individuals to band together to ensure that vivisection ceases, once and for all. We, and the animals, can only rely on ourselves to stop the suffering.