EU: another citizen’s initiative collects 1 million signatures to protect the right to life … of animals.

By J.C. von Krempach, J.D. | October 22, 2013

Dear friends, we have recently posted several contributions regarding the European Citizen’s Initiative (ECI) “One of Us”, which has received the support of 1.4 Million citizens who request the EU to stop funding abortions. This is only the second such initiative to cross the threshold of one million signatures, which obliges the EU institution to deal with the petition in a formal public procedure.

It appears that there is now a third initiative coming very near to crossing the magic one-million-signatures threshold. It is called “Stop Vivisection” and claims to have collected more than 997.000 signatures with just 10 more days to go until the petition will be closed. It seems likely that it will cross the threshold in extremis – but it remains of course to be seen what is left of those 1 million plus x signatures after the signatures have been validated by Member State’s electoral boards.

The pivotal claim of “Stop Vivisection” is that “animal experimentation – or vivisection – is, without a shadow of a doubt, to be considered as an intolerable practice” and must therefore be outlawed. Therefore, the initiative calls on the EU to “abrogate Directive 2010/63/EU on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes”, and to “present a new proposal geared to doing away with animal experimentation, by the compulsory use – in biomedical and toxicological research – of data specifically conceived for humans and not for animals”.

Both “One of Us” and “Stop Vivisection” have in common a genuine concern for “sentient and defenceless beings” (to use the expression I found on the “Stop Vivisection” website). I therefore fully respect the good intention of the “Stop Vivisection” website, even though I believe that the unborn child, being endowed with human dignity is certainly much more deserving of protection than any animal. But that does of course not mean that animals are not worthy of protection.

However, I have not signed that petition. Why not? Because what it calls for is utterly nonsensical.

The first point that is called for is the abrogation of Directive 2010/63/EU. But whoever takes a more than just superficial look at that Directive will find that it contains only a set of minimum standards for the protection of animals. On the one hand, nobody is, by virtue of this Directive, obliged to carry out scientific experiments on animals; on the other hand, Member States are left free to adopt or maintain stricter (i.e. more restrictive) rules on such experimentations. The only purpose of the Directive is that those who do carry out such experiments must respect certain minimum requirements: they must prove that the experiment is really necessary, and they must ensure that the suffering of animals is restricted to a minimum. In other words, the Directive is a (maybe imperfect) measure to protect animals. If it is not good enough, one should make proposals to improve it. But to abrogate the Directive is simply nonsensical: rather than setting an end to animal experimentation, it would remove an important barrier to it. If the Directive wasn’t there, Member States could allow vivisection without any of the restrictions set out as a EU minimum standard. In that sense, the petition seems to ask for something that  contradicts its stated purpose.

It is true that the petition does not stop here. Further to the abrogation of the existing Directive, it calls for legislation that does away with animal experimentation once and forever.

But such a radical request raises some important questions. Animal experimentation is not carried out for fun, but it serves a purpose: to ensure that new products (such as drugs, cosmetics, chemicals, agro-chemicals, etc.) are safe for human use. Without testing on animals, those products would have to be tested on human beings, or be placed on the market without testing (which is pretty much the same). Or, as a third possibility, there would be no new products.

What I find so regrettable about “Stop Vivisection” is the simplistic and un-constructive approach. The authors should have made the effort of making a concrete and realistic proposal how to improve the existing legislation. But to say that there should be no animal experimentation at all is tantamount to saying that human beings should be used instead of guinea-pigs. That is not just silly, but it is irresponsible. And instead of being pro-animal, it is in fact anti-human.

By the way, who are the human beings that should be used for such experiments? Is it by any chance the “surplus” embryos that are left over from assisted procreation procedures?

Of course, when you look for an answer to these questions on the “Stop Vivisection” website, you will not find it there. That is maybe no coincidence…

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