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Hidden Cameras in Laboratories in Israel
To view the hidden cameras video
Our hidden cameras expose what animal researchers don't want the public to see. These cameras operate in scientific institutions, including all of the major universities.
Half a million animals suffer and die in Israeli laboratories every year and will end up as ashes.The vast majority of the experiments have no application to human medicine.
We want to expose the truth to people about what 21st century biomedical research looks like in Israel: out of date, cruel, unscientific, wasteful and disgusting: row upon row of small cages with rats, mice and rabbits – some enclosed within steel cupboards – like household utensils; invasive procedures conducted on conscious, feeling animals; removal of organs from still living animals, including embryos and worse – much worse. The public needs to know these facts and the animals need to be spared these horrors.
In addition to our undercover work, we study the published scientific articles involving the actual animal experiments exposed using our hidden cameras. We are continually shocked to find that researchers find new ways to torture helpless living beings. Most of these studies fall under the category of "fundamental research", which are responsible for immense animal suffering, with no benefit to either human or veterinary medicine.
The hidden cameras campaign inside Israeli laboratories is a cooperation of "Behind Closed Doors" organization, "“Let the Animals Live" organization and "Animal Log" group..
Let's close down the Mazor breeding farm
To view "Israel against Mazor Farm" video
The Mazor Farm currently holds 1,000 long tailed macaque monkeys. Some of these monkeys were wild caught on the island of Mauritius, while others were born in captivity in the farm. Mazor is a link in the chain of cruel trade in which monkeys are forcibly removed from their natural environment then flown thousands of miles in small cages to laboratories or breeding facilities. These animals will have been separated from their family groups, the young brutally separated from their mothers.
Based on official statistics, the Mazor Farm is directly responsible for the massive capture of wild monkeys on the island of Mauritius. Contrary to its declared status as a "breeding facility", Mazor lacks a self sustaining breeding colony and so import large numbers of wild caught monkeys, as it has done since its inception in 1991 and up to the present day.
Mazor is little more than a monkey breeding factory, whose manager considers the monkeys to be "production units" and their sole purpose is to increase profits, through the sale of the offspring to laboratories. To further increase profitability, the young are separated early from their mothers, so that these females will mate as soon as possible. Early forced separation is traumatic to both the young and the mothers. These mothers will cry out and cling in desperation to the bars of their cages in a vain attempt to look for their young. The young who have been moved to a separate enclosure, will in turn look for their mothers and display signs of severe distress. Not all of these animals will survive this difficult period of separation and incarceration and some will die.
Those who survive will have their chests tattooed with a four digit serial number and then be sold to laboratories in Europe, the US and Israel. Every year, hundreds of these terrified young monkeys will be forced to travel huge distances in tiny crates to faraway destinations, to a fate worse than death, which awaits them. Each of these "units" will fill the pockets of the breeding farm manager to the tune of $2800.
Mazor Farm's trade in monkeys has added Israel's national airline El Al, to the blacklist of seven airlines that still transport monkeys for laboratory experiments, compared to 123 airlines that have joined an international boycott not to fly monkeys for experiments.
A fate worse than death
The vast majority of these young monkeys will be sold to laboratories that specialize in toxicology (poisoning tests). Among the clients of Mazor are Covance (Germany), the Swedish Biological Institute, as well as laboratories in the UK, Belgium, Italy and the US. The monkeys will be housed in miserable conditions and will undergo toxicity tests in which they will be injected or force fed with drugs and other chemicals. Most of the animals will die during these tests, and those who survive will be killed at the end of the experiment.
Most of the monkeys sold to laboratories within Israel will undergo invasive brain experiments. These experiments involve water deprivation, immobilization in a primate chair for extended periods of time, surgical removal of the top of the skull, and implantation of equipment in the skull and the brain itself. These types of experiment typically last several years, after which most of the monkeys will be killed. In rare instances, individual monkeys are released and allowed to undergo rehabilitation in sanctuaries.
Call for Action!
Last July, Behind Closed Doors together with other animal rights' groups, called on the Minister of Environmental Protection to withdraw the Mazor trade licence (import and export). The Minister is currently studying our written proposal and is expected shortly to announce his decision.
We would like to ask you to please write a polite message to the Minister, making clear your views that the Mazor monkey breeding farm must be closed down:
Gilad Ardan, Minister of Environmental Protection
fax +972-2-6535958
Postal address: Kanfey Nesharim 5, P.O. Box 34033, Jerusalem 95464, Israel.
A Psychiatric Opinion of Animal Research
in the field of Psychobiology
It is difficult to comprehend how ordinary people (animal researchers) are able to design experiments that constitute various forms of torment and torture. Consider for example the stress tests to which rats are exposed in so-called "behavioural" studies. Taxpayers unknowingly fund these horrific experiments. Rats and mice have been chosen as an appropriate "animal model" for the study of human depression and the development of pharmaceutical drugs to treat what is a complex and uniquely human condition.
One cannot help wondering what drives some researchers to conduct and repeat these kinds of studies on helpless animals. Following is a statement provided by a psychiatrist who has studied several scientific articles of rat and mouse studies in the field of psychobiology.
Dr. Cornelius Gropp, Director of Psychiatric Service of Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel:
"First of all it is the researchers' declared aim to stress these rats, to torture them, in other words.
The idea is to follow biological parameters induced by a controlled level of stress, and to use this as an animal model to predict parallel biological/immunological changes in human subjects under stress.
It sure needs a very weird sense of imagination to think up the schedule of stress, and the stressogenic situations. The bully seems to have played a large role in A's psychic background ,and she uses bullying to stress the hapless rats. Other ways to let those animals suffer is by near drowning ,perhaps inspired by the water boarding done by the CIA to make terrorist suspects talk and cooperate.
This “research” does never pretend to put an effort in lessening the animals suffering ,On the contrary ,it quite forcefully pursues it, though in a “scientifically” controlled way.
The only “humane” way indicated in the treatment of the animals are the abundant food, the hygiene and their “sacrifice”(it is quite telling that this word that brings back magic and superstition should be in such use).
The idea that this kind of controlled torture pertaining to human stress situations is fallacious. It is basic empiric knowledge about post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), that it can be caused by a wide range of situations .the “amplitude” of stress ,or as we saw it in the rats, the amount of discomfort, is in no way predicting the severity of the mental disorder caused by it.
If this sounds unfamiliar, than a short look at holocaust survivors will suffice to grasp that point. There are those who stayed a few months in a labour camp and suffered terribly in the years afterwards ,though they never were directly tortured or threatened. On the other side of the spectrum are people who were at Auschwitz and other death camps with undescribable horror ,who had only minimal or no post traumatic symptoms.
My point therefore is that controlling discomfort in animals seems like a waste of time ,if one wants to understand more about humans and PTSD. In humans these disorders are multi determined, and the premorbid personality and experience is probably crucial for the results of the impact of different sorts and sizes of stress/ors .
One could of course argue that this is not applied ,but pure basic research ,just to have done that kind of thing too.That would of course eliminate the somehow flimsy justification of this kind of experimental research that claims to further man’s and its health’ progress.
Therefore I think those researchers should perhaps channel their scientific curiosity and energy into less bizarre and more useful projects.
It is difficult for me to see the merit of these papers, and accept them as evidence for the academic standing, credence and integrity of their authors."