PRESS RELEASE STOP VIVISECTION

23/12/2013

After over a month of intense work, on the 23rd  of December 2013, the signatures collected in support of STOP VIVISECTION were submitted to the competent authorities of the European Union’s 28 Member States. The final number of statements supporting the initiative was 1.326.000, the extraordinary result of the commitment and perseverance of the thousands of volunteers of national committees and of hundreds of associations and committees all over Europe that worked hard to achieve this amazing objective.

Twelve Countries achieved their national targets with a very modest budget of approximately 25.000 euros, collected through the donations of supporters and NGOs.
National Authorities will now proceed to certify the validity of the signatures by the end of March 2014 and subsequently disclose the final result achieved by STOP VIVISECTION, although the margin of 300,000 extra signatures that top the required one million, reduces the possibility of bad surprises.

Once the STOP VIVISECTION initiative is approved, the European Commission will convene a hearing with our Scientific Committee, after which it will have to specify the actions it plans to take to enforce the will expressed by European citizens. We therefore call on every single Association, Committee and Citizen to continue disseminating, sensitising and exerting pressure to give strength to the growing number of supporters that have joined the ranks of the STOP VIVISECTION initiative, save for rare and incomprehensible exceptions.

We need to make it clear to the European Commission that it can move in one direction only, with the aim of guiding Europe through an “epochal change” in biomedical research and in the assessment of toxic substances.
Toxic substances are closing in on us. They are the growing cause of the incessant rise in childhood tumours and all other types of tumours, neurodegenerative diseases, neonatal malformations, sterility and so forth.

STOP VIVISECTION not only bears witness to the ethical stand taken by citizens wanting to respect all forms of life, but also to the impelling need to bring about change in scientific research, failing which there is no hope to upgrade scientific progress in Europe and there is no hope for the protection of human health and of the environment.
Just as 2013 turned out to be the year of STOP VIVISECTION, we hope that 2014 will be remembered as the year in which the European Union will have made an epochal and democratic change towards protecting human and animal health.