GREEN HILL BEAGLE BREEDER PROTEST IN ITALY

Saturday, 30th April

Almost 100 activists took part in a dramatic demo against vivisection and Green Hill/Marshall beagle breders on the centre of Milano, Italy. The idea behind this demo was to highlight the suffering of the animals and the presence of specific companies breeding them not far from all of us, even if people are not aware or they do not want to know.

Green Hill/Marshall is one of Europe's biggest beagle breeders for vivisection, and they supply many labs, including HLS. They ship 250 dogs every month, destined to die and suffer in labs. The campaign to close them down has been pressuring the Lombardia Region to apply specific animal welfare laws required for ALL other dog breeders or kennels in this region, not because we want bigger cages for the dogs, but simply because they would rend Green Hill/Marshall business impossible.

The Lombardia Regional Council has recently voted almost unanimously to take some steps towards the use of alternative research and against vivisection, while a few weeks later a law proposing the ban of lab animal breeders and of experiments for didactical purposes has been proposed and will be voted in the next months. Always aware of the risks behind political work, we still go on in the streets and continue to inform the people.

To put more pressure on the Region and this voting process we had a very visible demo with 55 people holding a letter each to form a big phrase saying: "The animals are still dying - Close down Green Hill, now!"

Others were laying on the ground under blankets with blood stains, simulating the animal victims of vivisection, in front of each of them a sign with a number for the animal and the experiment used to kill him.

Two more groups were blindfolded or had their mouth closed by black tape, to express the inability of animals to be heard, also because of devocalization, and people not willing to see.

In the meantime, for more than 2 hours, a sad music with a text expressing the life in a lab and giving numbers and statistics of Green Hill and labs in Italy, was loudly covering the whole square. And videos of undercover footage inside labs and HLS on the screen was going on all the time, with many people stoppping to see and asking informations and how to help.

We are sure this has been one of the best acts we ever did to catch people's attention and raise awareness on the plight of lab animals.

For more information (in Italian):
www.fermaregreenhill.net

http://www.shac.net/news/2011/april/30.html