Animal rights activists and pet lovers yesterday gathered in front of the Atomic Energy Council (AEC) to protest against the use of beagles in animal experiments.
The group was protesting against toxicity and safety tests for a new drug being developed by the council’s Institute of Nuclear Energy Research (INER) that are being carried out on beagles.
Holding up a banner reading “Protest against animal abuse! The AEC disregards life!” and accompanied by 10 beagles, the group of about 30 protesters urged the council to stop testing new drugs on animals.
Photo: CNA
Animal rights advocate Huang Tai-shan (黃泰山) said the council made a worldwide call for bids on the Internet earlier this month for 40 beagles to conduct drug tests.
The council is asking for beagles who have cancer, Huang said, adding that the council dissects some of the dogs on the second day after being injected with an experimental drug and that more are dissected on the 15th day of the testing.
“The lucky ones that survive the experiment are sent to other research centers for other experiments until they die,” he said.
The council denied asking for cancerous dogs, saying that the beagles imported are healthy dogs.
Wang Hsiao-hua (王小華), a member of the Kaohsiung Concern Stray Animal Association, said the beagles that were experimented on were just like any other pet beagle, and experienced fear and pain during the tests.
Many animal experiments to develop drugs have already proven ineffective, so the council should find alternative methods to test drugs, Huang said, adding that they were also strongly against the establishment of a dog radiotoxicological experiment lab at the council, as it would encourage more experiments on dogs.
The protest group submitted a petition to INER deputy director-general Shen Lie-hang (沈立漢), asking the council asking to stop the experiments on beagles.
Shen offered the group a report on the experiments they conducted inside the building.
“We don’t want to hear about the inhumane experiments, we want a clear answer from a higher authority. Life is nonnegotiable!” the protesters shouted, refusing to go inside the building for talks.
Following this, Atomic Energy Council Deputy Minister Chou Yuan-ching (周源卿) met with the protesters and agreed that the council would use official documents to inform the association of the council’s decision on the tests within two weeks.
Shen said the experiments were used to test the safety of a new drug being developed by the institute for treating colon and rectal cancer and that procedures had been carried out according to legal regulations.
Shen said that according to the Department of Health’s Guideline for the Nonclinical Pharmacology/Toxicology Studies for Medicinal Products, testing on rodents and non-rodents is necessary to ensure the safety of medicines on the human body and that the experiments should be monitored by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.
Shen said the use of beagles as non-rodent experimental animals is common in many countries because of their stable gene structure
The council limited the number of dogs used to the fewest possible, Shen added.
According to Council of Agriculture statistics, about 1.52 million animals (including 291 dogs) were used in research experiments in 2009 and about 1.3 million (including 247 dogs) were used last year.
The German city of Hamburg on Oct. 14 named a bridge “Kaohsiung-Brucke” after the Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung. The footbridge, formerly known as F566, is to the east of the Speicherstadt, the world’s largest warehouse district, and connects the Dar-es-Salaam-Platz to the Brooktorpromenade near the Port of Hamburg on the Elbe River. Timo Fischer, a Free Democratic Party member of the Hamburg-Mitte District Assembly, in May last year proposed the name change with support from members of the Social Democratic Party and the Christian Democratic Union. Kaohsiung and Hamburg in 1999 inked a sister city agreement, but despite more than a quarter-century of
Taiwanese officials are courting podcasters and influencers aligned with US President Donald Trump as they grow more worried the US leader could undermine Taiwanese interests in talks with China, people familiar with the matter said. Trump has said Taiwan would likely be on the agenda when he is expected to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) next week in a bid to resolve persistent trade tensions. China has asked the White House to officially declare it “opposes” Taiwanese independence, Bloomberg reported last month, a concession that would mark a major diplomatic win for Beijing. President William Lai (賴清德) and his top officials
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday expressed “grave concerns” after Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) reiterated the city-state’s opposition to “Taiwanese independence” during a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang (李強). In Singapore on Saturday, Wong and Li discussed cross-strait developments, the Singaporean Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. “Prime Minister Wong reiterated that Singapore has a clear and consistent ‘one China’ policy and is opposed to Taiwan independence,” it said. MOFA responded that it is an objective fact and a common understanding shared by many that the Republic of China (ROC) is an independent, sovereign nation, with world-leading
‘ONE CHINA’: A statement that Berlin decides its own China policy did not seem to sit well with Beijing, which offered only one meeting with the German official German Minister for Foreign Affairs Johann Wadephul’s trip to China has been canceled, a spokesperson for his ministry said yesterday, amid rising tensions between the two nations, including over Taiwan. Wadephul had planned to address Chinese curbs on rare earths during his visit, but his comments about Berlin deciding on the “design” of its “one China” policy ahead of the trip appear to have rankled China. Asked about Wadephul’s comments, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Guo Jiakun (郭嘉昆) said the “one China principle” has “no room for any self-definition.” In the interview published on Thursday, Wadephul said he would urge China to
RSS