(Sorry to use this picture again but inside the laboratories is a barricaded area!!)

UNEASE AT RETURN OF TOBACCO TESTS ON LIVE LIVE ANIMALS

(cutting Daily Telegraph February 3rd '00 by Marie Woolf, Political Correspondent)

MPs. have reacted angrily to a Home Office decision to allow experiments to test the effects of tobacco smoke.

The Home Office has authorised two new licences  which MPs and animal welfare groups breach a ban introduced soon after the general election.

One test involves guinea pigs having up to 40 convulsive spasms after inhaling tobacco smoke.

Labour outlawed testing of Tabasco products on conscious animals in 1997 following a public outcry over the revelation that beagles and greyhounds had been forced to inhale cigarette smoke in secret tests.

The Home Office says the new experiments are in line with the law because they do not involve the development of cigarettes or tobacco. But the minutes of the meeting of the Government's expert advisers on animal experiments show an unease about the licences. The tests, to determine susceptibility to serious lung diseases, may be used to help design programmes for stopping smoking.

Mike O'Brien, the Home Office minister, has given the two unnamed companies permission to carry out the tests, with the understanding that they do not use hamsters as originally proposed.

He asked for advice from the Animal Procedures Committee, which was divided over whether to allow the experiments to go ahead.

The minutes stated:"Some members took the view that such a development could be seen as paving the way for an expansion of the marketing of Tabacco and that granting project licences could be criticised on those grounds.

"The chairman would point this out to the minister."

The minutes question whether such experiments which will result in the death of several animals, were necessary because "smoking research has been going on for thirty years or more" They also show that the scientists were worried by the inhalation of high concentrations of smoke.

"The distress scorings appeared to treat an animal suffering from convulsions as "normal" and not requiring intervention" the minutes said.

Norman Baker, Liberal Democrat animal welfare spokesman, plans to table questions in the Commons today and ask for the minister to withdraw the licences.

"These are disgusting experiments which most people thought had been outlawed by the Government" he said.

Sarah Kite of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection said "We had believed that following the exposé of the smoking beagles, the Government had banned smoking experiments involving animals. Everyone had assumed that animals would not be used to test tobacco smoke/cutting ends

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WALK says

 Smoking is a habit of choice.

Why therefore should any poor animals be subjected to the horror described on an earlier entry on this page?

Do you really believe that the tests would stop at guinea pigs? We're dog people, but that doesn't mean to say "Oh guinea pigs....well that's alright then!"

They have promised  to stop testing on live animals. They have broken that promise. Whatever makes anyone think they would not continue with their habit of telling whoppers and invoke the assistance of beagles once again. Remember what was said that the beagle experiments were DONE IN SECRET!!

I am sorry  to be so cynical, Tony Ban-it-Blair,  but what was that you said about Mr Eccleston giving you a generous £1m. Mr Eccleston in case you've forgotten is a Formula One Racing promoter. Much of this is sponsored by cigarette companies. Come on!!!! We're not all daft!!

Music: "A whiter shade of pale" Proculharem (like this Government isn't!!)

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