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Belgium among top six EU countries for animal testing

10:41 23/10/2014

A company in Leuven, Bio-Incubator, has received authorisation to keep as many as 6,870 animals next year for testing, which is a quadrupling of the current number allowed. Animal Rights Organisation ADC is threatening with actions and 300 individuals have already submitted an appeal against the additional animal testing, reports Het Laatste Nieuws.

The protests are likely to have little effect at the government level, however. Alderman for Environment at the City of Leuven, Mohamed Ridouani (sp.a) defends the policy: "We do not allow just any animal testing in Leuven; we’ll only issue a permit if there is a significant medical basis for it, such as a case where animal testing is the only way to develop a particular drug that will directly benefit people,” he told the newspaper.

Statistics from the Federal Department of Public Health indicate that last year 626,742 animals were used for testing in Belgium. Despite being a small country, compared to other European countries Belgium is one of the biggest users of animal testing. Only the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain and Germany have more test animals. The majority of the animals are rats, but there are also tests done on fish, rabbits, birds, dogs, guinea pigs and monkeys.

According to Danny Flies, chairman of the Coalition Against Animal Testing (ADC), test animals are administered cocaine or injected with diseases, their bones are broken, or they are forced to swallow high doses of a chemical substance. To address the issue, ADC is holding a protest action in Leuven on November 19, after which Leuven mayor Louis Tobback will hold an evaluation of the event.

Written by Robyn Boyle

Comments

acsonline

This is disgusting, and typical of the attitude of most labs (including the US run Janssen Pharma) all over the place: " we cannot afford alternative methods, on account of a low budget" etc. Particularly true for university labs (that should know better!).
The Ebola vaccine developed by Janssen was probably tested on dogs anyway (they have a lot of them in their experimental labs there...). How come? No dog ever caught Ebola. Please look to humans for that! - Let Leuven's Tobback "evaluate" the situation by all means; and help cut vivisection OUT altogether (he owes it to his ailing party! ).

Oct 28, 2014 18:02