For immediate release

Animal experimenters gather in Wellington, protests planned

Animal Rights activists are angry that an animal research conference is being held in Wellington.. The Australia and New Zealand Laboratory Animal Association (ANZSLAA) opened its annual conference this morning at the Duxton Hotel.

In New Zealand, 341,520 animals were experimented on last year, including 18,702 in “very severe” suffering experiments according to a government report. The people who do these experiments are attending the conference and animal experimentation equipment will be on show for the delegates.

A spokesperson for the Wellington Animal Rights Network, Mark Eden, said “The people at this conference are directly responsible for the violent deaths of thousands of animals in laboratories around the country. The number of animals used in experiments just keeps going up and up despite all the talk about ethics committees and strict regulations”.

“The people in this conference are directly responsible for some of the worst animal cruelty in the country. They literally do have blood on thier hands. They should not be allowed to walk the streets and have conferences where they admire the surgery tools and cages on display, and talk about how they can improve their animal killing techniques” he said.

“We will be encouraging people to boycott the Duxton Hotel and any other businesses that have anything to do with this conference. We apologise in advance to any non involved patrons of the Duxton for the noise and disruption caused by our protests and we encourage them to go and stay somewhere else” said Mr Eden

The Wellington Animal Rights Network is organising protests against the conference on Wednesday night (5pm outside the Duxton Hotel, 170 Wakefield Street Wellington)

For info on the ANZSLAA conference go to thier website
http://www.smalltalkevents.com.au/ANZLAA09/Default.aspx

ENDS

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