IAVS News Release - for immediate use

The Irish Anti-Vivisection Society (IAVS) has strongly criticised the European Commission and Irish Government for ignoring its legal obligations to tackle the suffering of animals in experimentation.

The Directive, which came into force in Ireland in 2012, is yet another example of how vague references to animal welfare are used to fool the public into thinking that action is being taken, when in reality animals are still being systematically abused with no serious thought about their wellbeing or whether the experiments will actually produce useful results.

In our official submission to the Commission’s official review of the EU Directive on animal experimentation, we have pointed out that both the Commission and the Irish Government have broken promises to improve animal welfare, as the number and severity of experiments remains very high in Ireland.

While Science Foundation Ireland has just started to make positive moves to fund research into replacing harmful animal experiments, the Government in general seems to be complacent about unnecessary testing, including extremely severe poisoning procedures involving botox-type cosmetics.

To start addressing rampant unnecessary cruelty, we have called for the closure of loopholes that currently mean animal research proposals are being rubber-stamped by the Irish regulatory body, the Health Products Regulatory Authority. Furthermore, if the public’s concern - and the stated aims of the Directive itself - for animal welfare are to be reflected then legally-binding targets are necessary for the reduction and elimination of pain and suffering in animal experimentation.

You can read a copy of our submission here.