Protest scheduled for Charles River Laboratories in Co. Mayo

national | animal rights | press release Wednesday September 09, 2009 17:09 by Laura Broxson - National Animal Rights Association naracampaigns at gmail dot com PO Box 11019, Dublin 2

Hi,

On Tuesday 22nd September, members of the National Animal Rights Association will be going to Mayo for the day, to protest Charles River Laboratories.

This is part of SHAC's (www.shac.net) 'Operation Liberation' - a special week of action against vivisection breeders.

Charles River Laboratories, which is one of the biggest animal testing companies in the world, has two research facilities in Ireland. They are located in: Carrentrila, Ballina, Co. Mayo and Glenamoy, Co. Mayo.

Charles River Labs. are a contract testing business, which means they will test anything, on any animal, for a price. They conduct painful, live experiments on animals for the Pharmaceutical, Animal Health, Medical Device, Biotechnology and Food Industries in Ireland.

Thousands of animals are experimented on in these labs every year. Their torturous lives are full of pain, fear, suffering and misery. And any animal that manages to survive an experiment, is killed shortly afterwards.

They breed animals on site, both for their own use and to sell to universities and other commercial laboratories, and we have been informed by sympathisers that the species used include mice, rats, dogs, cats and horses. Over the years we have also received claims of animal bodies and toxic waste being dumped in the nearby lake, as well as reports of dogs being heard barking and howling for hours on end in breeding sheds.

Disturbingly though, a lot of the locals casually just refer to these premises as 'rat factories'.

We'll be protesting both Charles Rivers' facilities on the day, and will also be distributing special "whistle blower" leaflets while we're over there. This will be the first time these labs have been the target of protest.

We will be sending out more specific details nearer the time, so please contact us if you would like to get involved: naracampaigns@gmail.com

This will be an all-day event though, (leaving Dublin around 7am/8am that morning, and coming back late that night). The reason we have chosen to do this on a week day is because we want to maximise our impact while we're there (very few staff would be there on weekends).

We will be relying on activists' cars for transport, so if you can offer to give people lifts, please get in touch with us as soon as possible. And if you want to come on the day, please let us know so we can book your place. Feel free to pass this notice on to anyone you think might want to attend, or be able to help with transport.

More details coming soon!

Laura Broxson

National Animal Rights Association