NOAV Hits The Media!

NOAV has been hitting the national and the student press recently. The Dailymail, The Mirror and The Independent have all covered the campaign nationally and The Varsity, The Tab and even The Daily Bruin (from the USA) have provided the student coverage. The Cambridge Evening News has provided the mainstream local coverage for Cambridge.

All the coverage has been focused on our student vivisectors campaign which calls on students to ‘shop’ colleagues involved in animal research. Of course the media has completely over-hyped the whole campaign – this is exactly what we hoped they would do so that the campaign could gain some national prominence.

So why Cambridge and why now?

While the student vivisectors campaign is a national operation there has been a focus on Cambridge. The location for this and the time have been no accident. AstraZeneca are getting ready to build their new global headquarters and animal testing lab on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, it is therefore necessary that NOAV is firmly in the minds of all those making decisions about this project. It needs to be clear that we can gain national attention and do effective peaceful protest.

Our aim with the poster campaign is to build a group of student spies who can find out about those that do experiments on animals at the University. Through engagement with those doing such experiments we hope to ‘turn’ some of these individuals who will then go into industry as spies for us. When AstraZeneca and others hire Cambridge academics they will never know if they are hiring one of those people we have ‘turned’ or not!

What the media got wrong.

Most of what the press printed was distorted and we will not be going through every mistake they made, but a few were rather amusing and we shall address them here.

The Daily Bruin a US student paper thought we were targeting students in the USA. They were even warned by campus police about our group. NOAV is of course exclusively involved only in the UK, we are a national campaign!

The Tab (and the Mirror copying from The Tab) suggested a NOAV spokesperson had said “people who choose to exploit animals open themselves up to the possibility of personal risk”. The context of this was a journalists question which was “don’t you think ‘name and shaming’ someone puts them at risk?” The spokesperson’s reply was simply that some jobs carry risk, security guards being one example and those involved in animal research (due to it being controversial) being another. Our spokesperson said that it is not us creating such risk and that we do not condone threatening behaviours.

It is not only our ethical position that we are non-threatening, it is our practical position as well. Our student spies would not be willing to hand over details of people they know that do these experiments if they thought they were putting them in danger.

So what is ‘naming and shaming’ about and why do we need personal details?

‘Naming and shaming’ is used so that those using animals in cruel experiments and who refuse to negotiate can be required to give a public account of why their research is acceptable. This may involve them being politely and calmly asked to justify their work in public places, for example. It should always be the subject of debate and discussion in their social circles and the wider community.
Personal details are required predominantly so we can make contact with the person and see if they are willing to end their use of animals, if they do not wish to talk to us that will be respected (this reason is stated clearly on the posters). The secondary reason is it is a test to work out if our student spies actually know much about the person they are informing on! If we are going to pay good money for information we want the spy to be able to get very close to the target, so that the best intelligence can be gathered.

What’s next?

There are some exciting and creative projects coming up for NOAV. Please like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter to stay up to date.