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New Zealand fails to make rehoming lab animals mandatory
#1
The New Zealand government could have acted to protect lab animals. It could have made it mandatory for them to be rehomed.
Instead labs are free to kill then and kill them they do in large numbers. About 250 animals a day are killed by labs.

https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/...le-to-know

Their reasoning for not changing the law?
"The Primary Production Select Committee said it would not make rehoming mandatory because there was nothing in the law to prevent research groups from already doing so."

The various research labs have always been able to rehome animals. They could physically do it. What they lack is the will to do it. That is why it needs to be mandatory. Anything less will have no result at all. The government committee has completely missed the point.

At a time when other countries are trying to rehome lab animals, New Zealand has failed. Animals are still being killed in large numbers.
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Catherine

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#2
Yes, that is indeed very sad: a missed opportunity. But New Zealand is not alone in not making rehoming compulsory for laboratory animals. The UK has a very poor record on this issue, so do lots of other countries.

Such animals deserve the chance of a life after use for experiments, rather than being killed (discarded as "expendable"). Rehoming is a better alternative. However, there is also a risk: labs could exploit their "humane face" in rehoming (ridiculous, I know, but they will....) as a means to continue using animals for tests indefinitely - even where valid non-animals alternatives exist (tissue culture, etc.). They have invested huge sums in cages, equipment and so forth for animals and don't want to modernise.

Rehoming should be welcomed as "better than nothing" - as long as the ultimate goal of abolition is kept on the agenda and the pressure to modernise is kept up.
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#3
I can see how rehoming lab animals could backfire if it made the use of lab animals seen benign. However having living examples of lab animals in homes enjoying life does question whether it is right to use them in the labs in the first place. 

I think rehoming is the least we can do. We have caused these animals suffering and anxiety. We owe them good lives once we are finished with them. It is sad that so many countries refuse to push rehoming. Those places that do rehome lab animals will end up embarrassing those countries that don't.

This is going to be a victory that comes in small pieces. Gradually it will become the norm to rehome lab animals. Very slowly non animal methods will be implemented. As you say, companies have a lot of money invested in animal cages and they don't want to change. They will hold on as long as they can. When it becomes clear that animal tests don't work and there are better ways, then we will gradually see a change. I think they will phase the animal tests out rather than just give them up. In the end I think they will give up animal testing.
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Catherine

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