B&K Universal lab animals
Ricky Gervais, Brian May (from Queen) and 28,000 petition signers blocked what would have been the biggest breeding facility for laboratory beagles in the UK last week.
May, who now campaigns against animal experiments through his group SAVE ME, said on his site that the farm in Grimston would have been “breeding of thousands of beagles to be used in experiments both in the UK and overseas.” The local planning committee said no. But that’s not the end of it. Bantin & Kingman Ltd., which produces all kinds of lab animals, is appealing.
British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) lead the campaign against Bantin & Kingman Ltd. B&K says it has a “core business of breeding laboratory animals” and offers “a range of complementary products and services…contract breeding, management and commercialisation of transgenic strains… international animal transportation services (Biologistics)….”
Ricky Gervais tweeted his congratulations to the BUAV, which mentioned him in their thanks.
In the US the laboratory animal situation is more scattershot. As of 2009 the USDA licensed 3,898 Class A animal dealers (which breed animals specifically for research) and 1,031 Class B dealers, who get the animals from all kinds of places. However awful the Class A guys are (and, my own beagles came from a gross place in NC), the Class B are worse. They’re the ones driving around in vans, snatching pets. The biggest in the US is Charles River Laboratories in MA, which had 736 dogs last year, down from 3247 in 2008. PETA says 75,000 dogs are in research labs in the US. So this is one small step, but a good one.
Read about former laboratory beagles
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Where to See Animals in the Northeast
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