Day: July 28, 2023

Farm Animals, General News

Vatican City: Animal rights campaigners urge Pope Francis to denounce bullfighting.

Animal rights campaigners urge Pope Francis to denounce bullfighting

Animal rights campaigners urge Pope Francis to denounce bullfighting | Reuters

VATICAN CITY, July 28 (Reuters) – A group of animal rights activists gathered near the Vatican on Friday dressed in red capes and fake horns to urge Pope Francis to denounce what they see as the barbaric practice of bullfighting.

The corrida, in which the animal usually ends up killed by a sword thrust by a matador in shining costume, is seen by supporters as an age-old tradition to be preserved, but condemned by critics as a cruel ritual.

“Catholic Church: Silence is Violence! Denounce bullfighting,” read a banner held up by the activists near the ancient Roman Castel Sant’Angelo fortress on the banks of the River Tiber, in view of St Peter’s Basilica.

Since bullfighting events “are often held in honour of Catholic saints or during holy Christian celebrations, the Catholic Church can and must help end this abuse by publicly condemning bull torture in the name of religion,” animal rights group PETA said in a statement.

“We are asking the pontiff, the pope, as the representative of the Roman Catholic Church, to publicly condemn, to denounce the torture that is done on bulls in the corrida,” Patrizia Re, a spokesperson for PETA Italy, told Reuters.

The Vatican’s press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In 1567, Pope Pius V did outlaw bullfighting, calling the practice “alien from Christian piety and charity” and “better suited to demons rather than men”, but his ban eventually lapsed.

Reporting by Antonio Denti Writing by Alvise Armellini Editing by Peter Graff

Bless you my children !

Regards Mark

General News, Uncategorized

Italy: Bear Attacks: Animals Behind Alpine Attacks Spared Slaughter

Italy bear attacks: Animals behind Alpine attacks spared slaughter

Italy bear attacks: Animals behind Alpine attacks spared slaughter – BBC News

Activists stood outside the court in Rome calling for the cull to be halted

A top court in Rome has ruled that a culling order for two bears in northern Italy should be suspended, backing an appeal by animal rights activists.

One of the bears, a 17-year-old female called JJ4, was captured after it killed jogger Andrea Papi in the Alps.

The other, known as MJ5, had attacked a hiker in the same area weeks earlier.

Italy’s Council of State said the slaughter ruling “appears disproportionate and inconsistent with supranational and national rules”.

The case will now be referred back to a local court for a final appeal by the end of the year.

When JJ4 was captured in April the governor of Trentino province, Maurizio Fugatti, said “we would have liked to kill the bear on the spot”.

Mr Papi, 26, was the first Italian known to have been killed by a bear for years. He had been jogging on the slopes of Mt Peller above the town of Caldes when he was attacked.

JJ4 was taken to an animal care centre near the city of Trento but to this day MJ5, a male bear who attacked a 39-year-old hiker in March, continues to roam free in the Brenta Dolomites mountain range.

However, both bears faced a slaughter order and their case was taken up by animal welfare groups who said the animals were a protected species in Italy.

The local administrative court put a hold on the order until December, to allow further evidence to be submitted and for animal rights groups to find an alternative to slaughter.

Italy’s environment minister said he too was against the cull and last week the government said that authorities in Romania were ready to admit JJ4 to a sanctuary for rescued brown bears, described as the biggest of its kind in the world with a population of more than 100 animals.

Another alternative proposed by animal rights groups is for a reserve to be set up in the Trentino area.

Judges at the Council of State in Rome found on Friday that the slaughter ruling seemed disproportionate. Brown bears were protected by a 1979 Bern Convention on wildlife, they said, and international norms required that “the measure of culling represents a last resort”.

Exceptions to a ban on killing a protected species could only be allowed “on condition there exists no other valid solution”, they added.

The alpine row over problem bears

Brown bears were reintroduced to northern Italy in 1999 under a European conservation project called “Life Ursus”, but their numbers have gradually climbed beyond 100.

The Trentino governor has said the province now has some 70 “excess bears” and has accused activists preoccupied with JJ4’s fate of being ideological.

The recent attacks triggered alarm locally and local mayors threatened to resign if action was not taken to bring the numbers down.

The animal welfare groups who brought the appeal to Rome said that Friday’s ruling “gives confidence and hope to those fighting for a reprieve for the animals condemned to die by the autonomous province of Trento”.

Regards Mark

General News, Vivisection

New study reveals 4.2 million animals used in just three test categories for REACH – and numbers are still rising

28 July 2023

A recently published study, co-authored by the Centre for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT), reveals that 4.2 million animals have been used to date to comply with the REACH Regulation in three test categories: repeated-dose toxicity, developmental toxicity, and reproductive toxicity.

Read the full study here.

The  Registration,  Evaluation,  Authorisation  and  Restriction  of  Chemicals (REACH) Regulation (EC 1907/2006), which came into force across Europe 16 years ago, is the most important piece of EU legislation to protect human health and the environment from the risks that chemicals can pose. It requires the chemical industry to test the safety of all chemicals used in their products. Although animal testing is only allowed as a last resort for safety assessment, i.e. when there is no other non-animal method to obtain the safety information, a large number of animals are still used for this purpose. However, the exact number is neither clear nor publicly available. Therefore, the authors of the study identified the animals used under REACH for the above-mentioned test categories, which represent the majority of animal use under REACH. Based on a direct count of animals in REACH dossiers since 2009, the study shows that approximately 2.9 million animals have been used to date and a further 1.3 million animals are being used in ongoing chemical tests. As compliance checks continue, it is expected that more animal testing will be required.

The study provides clear evidence that the number of animals suffering and dying for chemical testing has been vastly underestimated. The figures for the three test categories analysed to date already far exceed the European Commission’s original estimate of 2.6 million animals that would be used for all test categories as a result of the implementation of the REACH Regulation. The main reason for this difference is that the European Commission’s estimate did not include offspring, although they represent most animals used for REACH. Other reasons include surplus animals to ensure sufficient survival to meet the minimum testing requirements, and additional test animal groups. The authors of the study continue to count all animals used for all test categories in order to obtain a direct estimate of animal use under REACH. Roughly speaking, the number of animals used for other test categories is estimated at between 0.6 and 3.2 million.

The figures are published to coincide with the European Commission’s revision of the REACH Regulation which is likely to expand and increase animal test requirements despite the legal requirement to only use animals as a last resort, the 2021 vote by the European Parliament to phase out such tests in favour of innovative animal-free science, and the well known limitations of animal tests. For instance, an additional 3.5 to 6.9 million animal tests are expected due to the 2022 amendment of REACH. Although the analysis of the use of non-animal test methods was beyond the scope of the study, the authors reported issues with the “read-across” approach (i.e. predicting toxicity by comparison with structurally similar chemicals that have  already been tested). ECHA reports that in 75% of cases, read-across methods were rejected during compliance checks, often  due  to  an  unsatisfactory  justification, triggering the request for animal use to cover the toxicity test.

It is clear the effects of chemicals on human health and the environment are still very poorly understood, with a staggering 70% of EU substances still ‘with poor characterisation of their hazards and exposures’. When we need to communicate or travel, do we resort to antique phones or vintage cars? Of course not. We use the most up-to-date models available, so why is the same not true for chemical safety and research, when such a critical objective- the protection of human health and the environment – is at stake? The implementation and use of non-animal approaches that provide more biologically relevant data is considered by the scientific community to be long overdue and urgently needed to overcome the problems of animal tests, which cannot reliably predict human safety.  

In line with the Commission’s commitment to ultimately move to an animal-free regulatory system under chemicals legislation, it is time for regulators and stakeholders to move beyond rhetoric and leave the old ways behind, by taking action to i) make better use of existing methods and; ii) invest in the development of new scientifically advanced, non-animal approaches to better protect human health and the environment. This can and must be done in a risk-free, measured, intelligent way,  not only to assess – but also to improve – protection levels for human health and the environment.

Regards Mark