This morning our Executive Director, Tara Jackson was on the TV1 Breakfast Show. She was talking about our Out of the Labs petition and why the NZ Government needs to establish a mandatory rehoming policy for animals used and bred for science in NZ. If you missed the show you can watch it online here.
Currently, there are no laws or regulations in place to protect these animals from being needlessly killed. Today the Primary Production Select Committee are meeting to discuss our petition.
While we are strongly opposed to animal experimentation and we actively campaign to stop this from continuing, there is no reason for the animals who are sadly still being used by the industry to be treated like they are disposable pieces of lab equipment.
We hope that these MPs listen to the thousands of Kiwi's who signed our petition asking for change.
The TV1 News that night also featured a story about our Out of the Labs petition. Nathan Guy was interviewed on this segment and we were a bit baffled by his response! He said that he has concerns about the amount of land use required to rehome these animals, we will be requesting a meeting with him in person asap to assure him that this won't be an issue.
The main animals this mandatory retirement policy would affect are small animals like mice, rats, rabbits and guinea pigs so land use isn't an issue that we need to be concerned with. His response indicates a complete lack of understanding of the issue.
The change we are asking for is small. We simply want a mandatory retirement policy so that facilities have to at least try and rehome animals before any other options are considered (i.e. euthanasia).
