Will Young Handcuffs Himself To Puppy Breeding Facility To Protest Animal Testing

The facility breeds around 2,000 beagle puppies a year for animal testing purposes

Yesterday (November 16), musician Will Young handcuffed himself to the gates of a puppy breeding facility in a protest against animal testing.

The British entertainer locked himself to the steel gates of the Marshall Bioresources (MBR) Acres research site in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire. 

There, thousands of beagle puppies are bred for biomedical research. MBR says these experiments help produce “life-saving” treatments for humans. It has been running such operations for more than 80 years. 

Raising awareness

But not everyone agrees that the testing is justified. Campaigners say the puppies, who are sent to animal testing laboratories at around 16 weeks old, suffer tremendously during the experiments. 

Grassroots anti-animal testing campaign Camp Beagle calls the industry “barbaric.” 

“These beagle puppies will be used in the most horrific and unnecessary experiments for toxicology testing, in which tubes will be rammed down their throats and masks forced over their faces to ingest and inhale lethal doses of toxins,” the group writes online.

“They will be given no pain relief, blood will be taken out of their tiny veins every hour, they will vomit, blood, excessively drool, shiver from changes in body temperature, and cower at the back of the cages.”

Many of the puppies are killed at six months old. 

Young joined Camp Beagle protesters at the MBR facility. He was photographed alongside the protesters with a sign that read: “Cambridgeshire. Famous for beagle torture. Thanks to MBR.”

The 42-year-old posted about the issue online. “I spent today at the gates of MBR Acres in protest of their testing on beagles. I wanted to raise awareness of animal testing and the fact that this is a puppy farm that farms over 2,000 beagle puppies a year to be sent out to their inevitable torture and death,” Young wrote.

“People do not know about it in this country and that is why I’ve handcuffed myself to the gates.”

Wil Young

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-59309603

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Ricky Gervais Calls For Ban On ‘Terrifying’ Animal Testing In The UK

Ricky Gervais has criticized animal testing on dogs, calling the practice ‘terrifying’

Ricky Gervais is calling on the government to help protect lab animals, especially beagles. The British comedian slammed animal experiments and launched a campaign to ban all animal testing in the UK.

Gervais – who often speaks about various animal rights issues – urged the government to include animals used for testing in the Animal Welfare Act. The Animal Welfare Act outlaws activities that cause ‘unnecessary suffering’ to an animal.

Animal testing on dogs

The campaign aligns with a protest held at Marshall BioResources (MBR) Acres in Cambridgeshire last month. MBR breeds around 2,000 puppies a year. They are sold at 16 weeks old for toxicology tests.

Protestors are demanding that the facility releases the dogs it is holding.

According to The Independent, toxicology testing typically involves force-feeding animals chemicals or making them inhale pesticides. This can occur every day for up to 90 days without pain relief. Eventually, the dogs are killed.

The publication points to data from the government, outlining that dogs were used in 4,340 procedures in the UK last year. A majority (4,270) of tests were on beagles, marking a 5.3 percent increase from the year prior.

Activists have monitored the breeding site for more than a year, claiming to have witnessed ‘harrowing’ scenes. They said they saw workers grabbing dogs by their necks and loading them into crowded trolleys. Dogs cried ‘pitifully’ from crates.

Ricky Gervais speaks out

Gervais commented: “I’m deeply shocked to learn that thousands of beautiful beagles are intensively bred, right here in the peace of the British countryside, for painful and terrifying toxicity experiments that are also now proven to entirely fail the search for human treatments and cures.”

Actor Peter Egan joins Gervais in the campaign. Egan shared a video online about the cause and urged the public to sign a petition. So far the petition has garnered more than 50,000 signatures. The government must respond to a petition that gets 10,00 signatures.

In the video, Gervais said: “A dog, they’re amazing. They’re magical. It’s the closest I get to spirituality, just watching a dog.”

“They’re beautiful, they’ve got soul. They’re amazing, they’re brilliant. I couldn’t invent a better thing. A dog – it’s 15 years of joy. What an amazing companion a dog is.”

Is animal testing effective?

MBR addressed the controversy, claiming that the animals are ‘raised to be healthy, content, and comfortable in a lab environment’. The company added it is ‘proud’ of the work it does.

“We can comment that there is no such thing as an ‘animal experimentation industry’ as such experiments form a small but crucial part of a wide range of applications from ecology work to investigations into human and animal diseases including those that led directly to the vaccines and treatments for COVID-19, cancer drugs, pet medicines and products labelled as safe for pets,” it said.

But research suggests animal testing is not always effective.

In 2006, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said: “Currently, nine out of ten experimental drugs fail in clinical studies because we cannot accurately predict how they will behave in people based on laboratory and animal studies.”

Dr Ray Greek is the president of Americans and Europeans for Medical Advancement. Speaking to Gervais, Greek confirmed the statistic. “Yes, that’s exactly right. The drugs that we have that work really, really well today, we got those despite animal testing.”

Gervais responded: “It will be the greatest scientific discovery in the world, that animal testing doesn’t work. Let’s stop it and put all this money into something that works better. This seems to be a no brainer.”

Will Young Handcuffs Himself To Puppy Breeding Facility To Protest Animal Testing – Plant Based News

Regards Mark