How to campaign against vivisection

Starting your own Uni Campaign

By Naomi Scott, Campaign Co-ordinator of Violence-Free Science at Sussex University

Campaigning against vivisection is something that doesn't just affect the 3 million animals suffering in UK laboratories every year - it also affects the vast amounts of people who suffer due to adverse side effects of animal tested drugs, modern medicine practises, and even cures for disease!

Whether you're running your own campaign or just taking part in a campaign of your choice, there are a few good tips to remember which will keep you firmly on your feet when facing up to the giant industry of vivisection.

Firstly, as a general overview, here are some things to bear in mind:

Know what you're up against: Read and educate yourself as much as you can about vivisection, the scientific validity of this method and examples of where animals fail to represent humans in medical studies. This may sound like a big task but it really isn't, especially with the following websites to help you out:
www.curedisease.net
www.vivisection-absurd.org.uk
www.drhadwentrust.org.uk
Know what you want to achieve: ... and be realistic! Things take time and perseverance. Be honest with yourself over what can be achieved in your time at University, and whether others will continue your campaign after you are gone. Provide a solution to what you are demanding, i.e. demonstrate which animal tests could be replaced with a specific non-animal method (the professionals at EMP are the good ones to ask about that!).
Get the resources to get the job done: Have meetings, make leaflets, draw up petitions, make banners and so on! Arm yourself with everything you will need for demonstrations, leaflet stalls and media attention to promote your event.

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So now you're ready to focus your attention on your university.

As mentioned above, you will need to know what you're up against. Before you can make any claims or demands, you'll need the information and the evidence. Here is how you can get your mitts on it:

Freedom of Information Request: A good place to start is to send off a letter to the person in charge of the science facilities at your University. Under the Freedom of Information Act (2000), information about experiments, types of animals and so on, can be requested. Some Universities are declining giving out information using the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986. However, whether this is being used as an excuse or whether they can legally withhold requested information is still a grey area, which we are currently reviewing.
Searching Scientific Journals: Published research papers can actually be searched using the online database search engine, PubMed.
Although these are only specially approved research papers deemed worthy of publication (goodness knows what they fail to publish!), there is a lot of good stuff to be found if you use the search function correctly. Detailed information about how to search and what to look for is available on the Violence-Free Science website.

Got the information? Now you have everything you need to get going with your campaign and can start coming up with interesting ways to get others to sit up and listen!

Remember to found all claims on the documents you have searched and/or the information gained from the Freedom of Information request. Keep a copy of any articles you submit to the university or local press and write your own version with added references to show where your claims came from. See Violence Free Science's university article for an example.

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