Cardiff Animal rights, a volunteer organization set up in 2011, has run the animal justice project’s campus without cruelty for two months since 23rd September, 2016, aiming to reduce animal testing in universities.
Cardiff Animal Rights organized demonstration protesting animal testing outside Cardiff University Student Union on 11 November.
According to the statistics released by The Home Office via Freedom of Information, Cardiff University hit 8th in the UK in terms of animals used. Over 52500 animals were experimented on in Cardiff University in 2015 alone, 50 times of that in any other university in Wales.
Lab coats with blood of testing animals
Faye Spens, 39, one of the main organizers of this campaign, said: “It is a long campaign and the problem is very large. And it will take a very long time and lots of focuses over different kinds of approaches to raise people’s awareness.”
“Actually, lots of people are surprised at this information and are interested in finding out what they can do to help us,” she added.
“It definitely has a positive impact on mainstream media as well,” said Rachel Ward, 30, a spokesperson of CAR, “People are absolutely outreached because of local coverage of Campus Without Cruelty. Most people don’t know this kind of thing is going on in universities. They don’t want people to know. Now information is out, people can make decision based on what they have.”
As a volunteer organization, CAR has 45 members right now and is striving for attracting new members and expanding its impact on the public.
Volunteers are distributing leaflets.
Rachel believes that education is the key when asked about their response to criticism of blocking medical advance. She mentioned: “Our focus is not to stop curing diseases, to stop that kind of progress. Some alternatives available can be used to reduce and even replace animal testing for some really fantastic research organizations I know don’t use animal testing at all. That’s what we want to achieve in this campaign.”
In response to the campaign, a Cardiff University spokesperson claimed: “All animal-related research work at Cardiff University is designed and carried out in accordance with the principles of the 3Rs.”
Though four Welsh universities— Cardiff University, Swansea University, Aberystwyth University and Bangor University— have committed to the 3Rs of the use of animals testing, the number of animals used in procedures completed in 2015 was 4.07 million, representing an increase of 1% compared with 2013.
“We’ll never stop,’’ said Rachel Ward at the end of today’s campaign.