NOAV is conducting a strategic campaign that will stop the construction of this new animal torture facility. We will use all lawful means at our disposal to target any company involved in this project.

The post International Animal Rights Day 2015 appeared first on NOAV - National Operation Anti-Vivisection.

Dear Friends,

On Christmas Day we sent out a message explaining the issues we face in bringing an end to vivisection. We outlined why moral suasion, public opinion and science alone has not brought down the vivisection complex. In this New Years Day message NOAV will lay out our strategy to damage and eventually end the vivisection industry.

Three months ago NOAV established itself as a grass-roots network of animal activists opposed to all animal testing. We had no resources, no formal structure and no slick marketing campaign. What we did have was a simple understanding that vivisection will only come to an end when the detriments to those causing harm to animals outweigh the benefits.

This led to the launch of our Student Vivisectors campaign which offered rewards to any student who was willing to hand over information about those doing experiments on animals at their University. This was a huge success not only in terms of the information we acquired, but the effect we had. NOAV was the centre of student, local and national media coverage, this in turn led to Universities becoming worried! Our sources inside Cambridge University told us that warning emails were sent out and even a student newspaper in the USA told us that campus police were warning students about NOAV!

The Universities that abuse animals in cruel tests were worried, not because they thought we were a physical threat as they claim, but because they didn’t want the world knowing their dirty little secrets! This is an effective tactic as it creates another detriment to abusing animals i.e. the stress of knowing that the abuse they partake in might be exposed at any moment and that they cannot trust anyone as they could very well be passing information back to us!

The strategy of creating detriments to those who abuse animals so that they will stop is nothing new, unfortunately such campaigns of the past have included unlawful direct action or civil disobedience. Unlawful acts have allowed the state to crush these campaigns. NOAV is committed to a totally lawful approach. We exercise social pressure rather than physical pressure. Those that abuse animals can expect a bright light to be shone on their activities and they can expect to be held accountable for their actions both socially and legally. However they can also expect no violence or unlawful acts to be taken against them. That is the NOAV approach.

Once the detriments outweigh the benefits to the vivisection complex the life science industry will itself lobby for an end to animal experiments, it will itself begin to reduce the numbers of animals they use to avoid being a main target of the animal rights movement and its own scientists will ‘discover’ the pointlessness of animal experiments.

We can and will win this fight but we need your help, please join us. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

Wishing you all a Happy New Year,

William Evans

On behalf of the NOAV team.

LIKE US ON FACEBOOK

The post The NOAV New Years Message appeared first on NOAV - National Operation Anti-Vivisection.

Dear Friends,

As we each sit down for our Christmas dinners, surrounded by the people and animals we love, we should turn a thought to the animals in laboratories all over the world. For these animals there is never a single day of freedom. These innocent creatures never get to socialise with their social groups or engage in the behaviours natural to their species. These beings live in constant fear of the vivisector’s knife, that they will be burnt, poisoned, force-fed toxic chemicals or have electrodes implanted in their brains. There is no Christmas for these creatures, nor even a single moment’s peace.

Since the Victorian era, people of good conscience have begged for an end to this cruelty, they have protested and lobbied, educated and discussed. But their efforts have been to no avail. The vested interests that profit from vivisection will not stop because of moral suasion, they care not for public opinion and they care still less for science.

– Vivisection allows companies to put questionable products on to the market and protect themselves against liability.

– Politicians will never ban vivisection in the UK as so-called ‘life sciences’ is a huge part of the economy and many have personal investments. Even if a huge majority of the public opposed all animal experiments it would never be a vote changing issue for most.

– The vivisectors will never be convinced by the scientific case against vivisection as their income and life’s work depends on it. Often they are driven by curiosity rather than human outcome and many are simply psychopathic sadists.

Therefore vivisection will only come to an end when the detriments to those causing harm to animals outweighs the benefits. We can and will create those detriments through all lawful means at our disposal! On New Years Day NOAV will release a full breakdown of the tactics we will be employing to reach this goal.

We are ready, are you?

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas,

William Evans

On behalf of the NOAV team.

LIKE US ON FACEBOOK

The post The NOAV Christmas Message appeared first on NOAV - National Operation Anti-Vivisection.

Often pro-vivisection apologists will say ‘these animal rights activists should volunteer to take the place of the animals in experiments’. Whilst we know that the best way to perform research actually involves modern human relevant techniques such as micro-dosing, computer modelling and DNA chips, we have decided to take up their challenge! If these sadistic scientists must test on someone, let it be us not the animals!

We have a petition where you can pledge to take the place of an animal in an experiment (in exchange for the animal being released to a loving home). Click here to sign up! The petition will be sent to the top animal experimenting Universities in the UK and to our current target AstraZeneca. We are putting our money where our mouth is – lets see how they respond!

Our hope is that this petition will help the public to see the barbarity of using animals in experiments and shame those institutions that still do.

The post ‘We Will Take The Place of Animals In Experiments’ Says NOAV Activists appeared first on NOAV - National Operation Anti-Vivisection.

National Operation Anti-Vivisection has submitted a planning objection to AstraZeneca plans to build a £330m HQ, R&D and animal torture lab in the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.

NOAV intends to stop this lab being build by all lawful means at our disposal.

We are asking supporters to submit letters of objection. A template is below. Deadline is this Monday at 5pm (17/11/14).

Mail to: applicationsupport@cambridge.gov.uk

Dear Cambridge City Council,

I am writing in support of National Operation Anti-Vivisection’s objection to application 14/1633/REM (AstraZeneca’s global headquarters and animal testing lab).

I wish to object on the basis of public safety, noise/disruption, traffic, policing costs, the environmental impact and the national interest. A full breakdown of these reasons can be found within NOAV’s objection which is incorporated into mine by reference. A copy of NOAV’s objection can be found at: wp-content/uploads/14-1633-REM-Objection-NOAV.pdf

Kind Regards,

[Your Name]

The post NOAV Objects to AstraZeneca Cambridge Planning Application appeared first on NOAV - National Operation Anti-Vivisection.

NOAV has been covered by the Mirror, The Independent, The Dailymail and others.

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.

The post NOAV Hits The Media! appeared first on NOAV - National Operation Anti-Vivisection.

Pitchfork reports that Canadian producer, artist, musician, singer-songwriter and music video director Claire Elise Boucher (aka Grimes) has refused to donate to the ALS Association due to their record of cruel and unnecessary animal tests.

She writes:

I don’t feel great about wasting water in this California drought, but I will donate money. However I will not donate money to this foundation because of their record of testing on animals.

She is instead giving her cash to the Malala Fund.

Pamela Anderson made the same choice not to donate based on the fact the ALS Association waste donors money on pointless animal abuse.

NOAV supports the choices both Grimes and Pamela Anderson have made in standing up for animals. If you want to see an end to all animal experiments please follow us on Facebook and Twitter for ways to help.

The post Canadian Musician Grimes Refuses ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’ Due To Animal Testing! appeared first on NOAV - National Operation Anti-Vivisection.

Rats are better than humans….. at least in some areas.

The British Psychological Society reports on an experiment showing that rats are better at a specific learning test because unlike humans rats are more able to follow a ‘implicit similarity approach’ i.e. going with gut instinct.

As the blog post explains:

The participants – 16 rats and 24 humans – were trained to recognise that certain patterns (stripes of light and dark, known as gratings) shown on a screen were the targets, while others were the distractors. The patterns were presented in pairs, and for the rats, if they followed the target pattern in a pair, this led them to the correct route (out of two) towards the safety of a platform in a water maze. For humans, choosing the target pattern simply led to presentation of a “correct” symbol – a green triangle pointing upwards; choosing the distractor pattern triggered a downward red triangle.

Through choosing the different patterns and receiving feedback, the rats and humans learned which patterns were targets and which were distractors. In one “rule based” version of the task, the targets and distractors always differed only along one dimension – either the frequency, or the orientation, of the light and dark stripes. In the other “information integration” version of the task, the targets differed from the distractors along both dimensions (frequency and orientation) simultaneously.

The key challenge occurred next, when the rats and humans entered the test phase, and attempted to generalise what they’d learned in the training phase to new pairs of patterns. The rats and humans performed similarly on the rule-based version of the task. However, when it came to the “information integration” version, the rats performed significantly better than the humans. This was because the humans’ performance dipped in the “integrated information” version of the task, whereas the rats performed just as well at this version as they did on the rule-based version.

This cruel experiment where rats were forced into a ‘water maze’ and only allowed to escape when they solved the puzzle demonstrates one thing – that humans are not superior to other animals. We are only superior if we choose to value the traits we have above the traits other animals have. We are certainly not morally superior as the people who conducted this test exemplify!

NOAV thinks  humans have no right to abuse other animals. If you agree, join us! Find us on Facebook, Twitter and other social media.

The post Rats Better Than Humans appeared first on NOAV - National Operation Anti-Vivisection.

When we think about the wonders of space travel we often forget about the many animals abused in experiments up there. If abusing animals on earth wasn’t enough, humans feel the need to abuse animals in space as well!

According to a press release about the International Space Station National Laboratory  by The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space:

“As part of a matching Grant Agreement with CASIS/NASA and the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, a bone densitometer (which measures bone density—the same technique used on Earth to diagnose and monitor osteoporosis patients) is being deployed for on-orbit animal research.”

The press release goes on to explain “The rodent habitat will be capable of transporting animals for long-duration experiments, which will allow the study of space effects on body systems, including bone loss studies that will use the densitometer.”

NOAV fights for a day when such experiments are illegal. If you want to join the fight for an end to all animal experiments please check out our website and follow/like us via the Facebook and Twitter buttons on the right-hand side of the page.

The post NASA Psychopaths Plan To Experiment On More Animals In Space! appeared first on NOAV - National Operation Anti-Vivisection.

The Express Newspaper has posted this cute picture of a Macaque blowing bubbles at a rescue centre in Texas.

The photo was taken at the Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Sanctuary in Kendalia, Texas after the monkey was saved from a painful life in a testing laboratory.

The Macaque was playing with the centre’s bubble-machine and as Director of Animal Operations Ashlei Martin explained to the Express “We like to do enrichment activities with the animals on a regular basis and as shown by these images, the animals respond to it really well”.

NOAV is campaigning for an end to all animal experiments and the day when no animal needs to be rescued from horrific labs. Please join our campaign.

The post CUTE: Monkey Rescued From Animal Lab Blowing Bubbles! appeared first on NOAV - National Operation Anti-Vivisection.