Welcome to Animal Defenders International

ADI reports on latest animal politics

• Animal Welfare Bill – Animal Defenders International (ADI), the international animal campaigning group, has launched its latest report in the House of Lords, “Animals in Travelling Circuses – The science on suffering”, as the Animal Welfare Bill goes through the Upper House. ADI has been campaigning for over 10 years to end the use of animals in circuses. MORI and NOP opinion polls conducted by ADI indicate overwhelming public support for a ban on animals travelling with circuses and 132 MPs have now signed EDM 1626 to ban animals in travelling circuses in the Animal Welfare Bill.  ADI is making the case for a total ban with certain circus animals being granted under license, providing their welfare needs are met.
  
  
• World Lab Animal Week – The annual NAVS awareness week served as a reminder that this year the UK has become the vivisection capital of Europe with 2.85 million experiments performed on animals in 2004. The recent TGN1412 drug trial disaster, which turned several healthy volunteers into 'Elephant Men', has once again shown that animal testing is not only unethical but also dangerous and unreliable. While countries such as Japan are investing in safer, animal-free testing facilities, animal experiments have reached their highest level for over a decade in the UK.  EDM 2088 tabled by David Taylor MP, argues for more government funding for new technology advances like micro-dosing which would make human testing far safer and accurate.
  
  
• ‘Big Brother’ producer, Endemol campaign –  ADI has called on the film production giant behind 'Big Brother' to drop a celebrity reality TV show set in a circus. The show from Endemol features celebrities performing with animals in Circo Victor Hugo Cardinali, the largest animal circus in Portugal.  After tremendous campaigning efforts from ADI, the 'Celebrity Circus' show has lost all five of its corporate sponsors, such as Banque Paribas subsidiary Credial and Bayer, and has been moved from a prime time slot to late night viewing.  ADI is working with David Amess MP to table an EDM to condemn such programmes that exploit wild and domestic circus animals for the sake of entertainment.
  
  
• Greece Circus Campaign gets underway with 10 towns banning travelling circuses –   The Greek launch of the 'Stop Circus Suffering’ campaign generated a huge amount of media interest across Europe and in the US. The Greek launch is the latest ADI circus campaign following those already up and running in the UK, Ireland, Norway, Portugal, the USA and in Chile, South America, with further launches to follow in Peru, Columbia, Brazil and Bolivia this year.  As the UK and Scottish Parliament commit to ban certain wild animals in circuses, Austria and 20 towns in Croatia have already instigated bans.  
  
  
• REACH – MEPs received thousands of campaign e-cards from ADI supporters to protest against EU proposals for additional unnecessary experiments on millions of animals. ADI has set out an alternative strategy which promotes the use of advanced scientific and technological techniques in the place of animal experiments, which have been found by scientific studies to be misleading.  On REACH, ADI has secured almost every demand from its first postcard campaign, which will save millions of lab animals’ lives.
  
  
• Dangerous Wild Animals Act – The review of the Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976, together with a look at section 8.2 of EU CITES regulations has brought discussion on primates as pets. ADI’s animal conservation initiative, ‘My Mate’s a Primate’, launched in June last year by TV star Alexei Sayle, focused on this as one of the four major threats to primates – the pet trade, their use in entertainment (TV, advertising, films and live shows) and in laboratory experiments and as bushmeat.  The campaign was followed by the instigation of International Primate Day as an annual event on 1 September 2005, which was attended by EastEnder TV actor Peter Polycarpou, former wife of Oasis star Noel Gallagher, Meg Matthews and ex-MTV presenter Donna Air.