World
Laboratory Animal Liberation Week (WLALW) (April 22 � 28, 2007) was the
largest event in opposition to animal experimentation in recent years!
During this amazing week, protests, news conferences, and other media
events occurred in 41 cities spanning 26 states coast to coast.
WLALW 2007 events were coordinated
in Birmingham (AL), Phoenix (AZ), Los Angeles, Davis, & San Francisco
(CA), Denver (CO), Farmington, Hartford, Storrs, & Wallingford (CT),
Jacksonville & Maitland (FL), Atlanta (GA), Moscow (ID), Fort Wayne
(IN), New Orleans & Lafayette (LA) Baltimore (MD), Boston (MA),
Minneapolis (MN), Jackson (MS), St. Louis (MO), Syracuse & New York City
(NY), Cleveland & Columbus (OH), Beaverton & Portland (OR), Philadelphia
(PA), Chattanooga & Nashville (TN), Austin, Dallas, & Houston (TX),
Burlington (VT), Fredericksburg & Richmond (VA), Seattle (WA), and
Milwaukee (WI).
During WLALW 2007 SAEN�s Michael
Budkie led successful news conferences in New Orleans & Lafayette (LA),
Birmingham (AL), and Nashville (TN) reaching hundreds of thousands of
people through news coverage on radio and television.
SAEN ventured into Louisiana,
because it is the number one state in the U.S. for imprisoning
primates. Tulane University (New Orleans) is home of one of the eight
regional primate research centers, imprisoning over 6000 primates.
During the 2005 reporting year over 900 primates died at Tulane, making
it one of the deadliest labs in the nation for non-human primates. The
University of Louisiana, Lafayette is the recipient of the NIH funding
for the New Iberia Research Center, which imprisons another 6200
primates.
In these news conferences SAEN
released information about highly invasive animal experiments at the
University of Alabama (Birmingham), Tulane, and the University of
Louisiana (Lafayette) and Vanderbilt University to news media. We are
continuing to work with local activists in these areas to investigate
and keep the pressure on these laboratories.
The campaign against experimentation
at the University of California, Los Angeles continued during WLALW with
a major protest which ended at the Chancellor�s office where activists
fought for the right to inspect UCLA laboratories.
The University of Washington,
Seattle was the target of another major protest which focused on the
university�s multiple violations of federal law, temporary cessation of
a research project, and reprimand of a UW researcher � all due to an
official complaint filed with the USDA by SAEN.
Across the U.S. activists focused on
the increase in violations of federal laws by laboratories. In the
five-year period ending in 2006 violations of the Animal Welfare Act
(AWA) by laboratories increased by over 90%. Key issues included
inadequate veterinary care and protocol regulation by Institutional
Animal Care & Use Committees, who were responsible for more than
half of the AWA violations by research facilities.
WLALW 2007 was also the beginning of
our effort to meet with representatives of laboratories to initiate
negotiations for concrete changes in animal experimentation. However,
our initial efforts were unsuccessful. In most cases, our attempts at
dialogue were stymied by local police or security who refused to allow
us to talk to laboratory/university staff.