Presentation to the Environment and Food Committee of the Danish
Parliament by Andre Menache on 7 December 2016.
I wish first of all to thank the organisers and the members of the Danish Parliament for the
opportunity to present this message.
The use of animals in research and testing is of great concern to all EU citizens, including
some of the Danish people. In fact, 4610 Danish citizens supported the European Citizens’
Initiative « Stop Vivisection », which was heard in the European Parliament on 11 May, 2015.
The manifesto of the Stop Vivisection ECI stated that :
Considering clear ethical objections to animal experiments and solid scientific principles
that invalidate the ‘animal model’ for predicting human response, we urge the European
Commission to abrogate Directive 2010/63/EU on the protection of animals used for
scientific purposes and to present a new proposal that does away with animal
experimentation and instead makes compulsory the use - in biomedical and toxicological
research - of data directly relevant for the human species.
For the past 100 years, the debate about the use of animals in science has been a debate about
the ethics of animal suffering. This debate will continue for another 100 years if we continue
to ignore the scientific debate that is growing louder and louder within the scientific
community.
The scientific argument against the use of animals in research and testing is a very strong
argument but it is also complex. Because it is complex, it is not easy to explain the scientific
argument to the general public. The aim of the Stop Vivisection ECI was to announce the
scientific argument against animal experiments. However, the European Commission did not
give us the opportunity to do so at the European Parliament on 11 May 2015. The
parliamentary hearing lasted for a total of three and a half hours. The representatives of Stop
Vivisection were given only 34 minutes out of three and a half hours, in which to present the
scientific argument.
My request to you, the Danish Parliament, is for you to be the first country in the EU to
launch a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the scientific justification of using
animals in research and testing. Why ? Because animal experiments have a huge impact on
the formulation of EU health and environmental policies that are guided on the basis of safety
data generated through animal tests (for example, the Biocidal Product Regulation
528/2012/EU, the REACH Regulation 1907/2006/EC and Directive 2003/63/EC relating to
medicinal products for human use).