The
Ministry of Environment has also confirmed that it believes
the undercover evidence obtained by the BUAV constitutes
a breach of German Animal Welfare law and recommends that
the court authority should intervene and start legal action
against the company.
This
procedure to withdraw Covance's licence will be started
by the City of Münster as the competent authority.
The
Ministry was so shocked by the BUAV's footage that it
has also made a recommendation to the Government that
Covance should install surveillance cameras in its laboratory
to prevent a repetition of the type of staff abuse that
the BUAV discovered.
"This
is fantastic news that the German authorities have acted
so swiftly to start procedures to withdraw Covance's licence
and we hope that this will be shortly followed by legal
action against the company for breaking the law," said
Wendy Higgins, Campaigns Director for the BUAV.
"We
believe that the BUAV's extraordinary evidence of animal
suffering and abuse clearly shows that Covance has been
routinely breaking both German and EU law relating to
animal experiments," she said.
"Our
evidence shows that, despite what the research industry
tell us, monkeys in EU labs are still suffering appalling
conditions and being subjected to unacceptable and abusive
staff behaviour," Higgins said.
For
five months, a BUAV operative called 'Marcus' worked undercover
as an animal technician at Covance, Münster, in Germany.
Marcus
witnessed the daily suffering of monkeys (including heavily
pregnant females) subjected to the abhorrent routine of
pharmaceutical toxicity testing, tormented by certain
staff, separated from each other, isolated in barren cages,
regularly and forcibly pumped full of drugs and eventually
killed.
BUAV's
evidence from inside Covance can be viewed at: www.buav.org/covance/index.html.
Readers are warned that the images and video footage from
Covance may be distressing to view. © 2004 Animal News
Center, Inc. Saturday, February 28, 2004
This
news was posted on the website of Animal News Centre -
www.anc.org
