An unusual process took place in Vienna on Monday. A woman ex-zookeeper at a mouse breeding laboratory at MedUni Vienna was accused of cruelty to animals.
Around 100 mice died. The woman is acquitted.
Online today at 1:54 p.m.
The prosecution had accused the woman of neglecting around 100 breeding mice that had died.
“In any case, it was hygienic grievances,” judge Stefan Erdei stated after extensive evidence proceedings.
According to her statements, the zookeeper was de facto responsible for a total of 6,000 mice in 1,900 cages at the Center for Biomedical Research.
She was overwhelmed “at least for months”, the judge found.
It would have been the task of the institute management to “organize it differently”.
The fact that the defendant accepted with her actions or omissions that the mice were tortured can “not necessarily be deduced from the external circumstances”.
In the opinion of the court, the incriminated offense was thus not fulfilled (!!!)
During a tour on November 27, 2020, the dead animals were discovered during inspection in the laboratory.
“It stank terribly. After decomposition. It was a sight of horror. I’ve never seen anything like it, ”recalled the vet who had initiated the investigation on the witness stand.
Dead mice were “both in the corridor and in the cages, partly next to live animals”.
In many of the cages there was a lack of water and food.
The defendant did not accept the accusation raised by the public prosecutor’s office that she had not provided the animals with water and food since November 20.
She admitted that she did not put the food in the designated food dispenser, but simply put it in the cages – not out of malice, but out of a lack of time.
She had to look after thousands of mice by herself, hadn’t had a vacation for eight years and even spent the weekends at the institute.
Last November alone, she would have accumulated 198 overtime: “We were certainly too few animal keepers for the work. I was so stupid and been inside all day and weekend. The researchers have already asked me if I sleep at all because I answered emails at 3:00 in the morning. “
Most of the cadavers involved in the process were mice, which she killed according to the order, the woman described.
Every week she killed 300 to 600 animals “with broken necks or gassing because they were not needed for research”.
In the week in question, she had ended the lives of 450 animals.
For lack of time, she “did not dispose of” the corpses, but “simply left them there”.
Richter stated “sense of mission”
Former colleagues and superiors then reported that the defendant was careful that no one else entered her work area.
The head of the facility stated as a witness: “Despite being asked, she repeatedly refused to take vacations and time off.”
In principle, there would have been “always someone who can stand in for her”.
According to the director, the mice were adequately supplied with water and food: “If I had had the feeling that this was not the case, I would have said it clearly. I wouldn’t have looked away. This person would have been brought to justice and immediately dismissed. ”
Regarding the killings carried out by the defendant, the head of the laboratory commented:“ Animals that do not go into experiments are continuously killed. This is Mendel. That is Mendel’s law. “
In the end, the judge summarized his impressions of the accused as follows:
“You had a sense of mission and considered yourself irreplaceable. This is a mistake that many people tend to make. “
https://wien.orf.at/stories/3106276/
And I mean…People who work in the laboratory and who massacre hundreds of animals every day or who witness others doing it in the laboratory MUST be dull and lacking in empathy, this is basically the basic qualification to be able to do the job at all.
Who breaks the neck of 300 to 600 creatures a week with bare hands and is compassionate in the process?
So it’s nobody’s fault when hundreds of mice starve and die of thirst in an animal laboratory.
This is obviously allowed in animal experiments.
So dear zookeepers in animal research laboratories! you are obviously allowed to behave as you want.
You do not need to fear the judiciary!
A perpetrator-friendly court will always find an exonerating judgment for animal abusers
My best regards to all, Venus
Allgäu-
World Animals Voice 