International pressure group
Animal Justice Project |
| Founded | 1 December 2014; 7 years ago (1 December 2014) |
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| Focus | Anti-vivisection, animal rights, speciesism |
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| Location | |
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| Origins | United Kingdom |
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| Method | Advocacy, media, research, outreach, investigations |
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| Website | animaljusticeproject.com |
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The Animal Justice Project is an international pressure group that campaigns against vivisection[1] and other animal industries based on what the group identifies as speciesism. The organisation was launched on 1 December 2014 by a group of campaigners and activists from the UK and Europe, with backgrounds in grassroots activism and professional animal rights. The organisation is currently active in both the UK and United States and works primarily for the abolition of the use of animals in laboratories and farms, for breeding, research and education.
The mission of Animal Justice Project is to raise awareness of the plight of non-human animals through advocacy, the media,[1] education, protest and research. The organisation promotes political anti-speciesism and is against any form of discrimination based on species, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, stating that it "does not welcome any group or individual that supports any form of discrimination or oppression be it against humans or non-human animals".[2]
Campaigns
Animal Justice Project campaigns against animal experiments on both moral grounds and scientific grounds.[2] Its first campaign, 'Secret War: The Invisible Victims',[3] was launched in March 2015 and highlighted the use of animals in warfare experiments. The launch was marked with a demonstration at the Animals in War Memorial in Central London. The campaign revealing animal experiments at the UK Government's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, Porton Down, featured on the front page of the Sunday Mirror.[4] Studies included guinea pigs being forced to inhale nerve gas, marmosets infected with biothreat diseases and pigs forced to inhale toxic mustard gas.
The organisation launched a second campaign in April 2015 to stop animal experiments involving recreational drugs including cocaine, ecstasy and nicotine at universities including Cambridge and Cardiff.[5][6][7] The Animal Justice Project claimed it was "an injustice that the UK Government continues to plough money into animal experiments in recreational drug research, rather than using public funds to help educate the public about the consequences of taking these drugs in the first place, improving treatments in specialist clinics, and the safe and effective rehabilitation of ex-drug users into society".
In 2016 Animal Justice project launched a new campaign called 'campus without cruelty' to tackle animal experiments taking place on university campuses across the UK. Currently government figures show that 47.7% of all experiments take place at universities.[8]
The aim of their latest campaign, 'cures not cruelty',[9] is to "expose the truth about the 'chilling' and 'unnecessary' animal experiments taking place in laboratories all over the country by, or on behalf of, British Heart Foundation (BHF) and Cancer Research UK (CRUK)". They believe that many people are unwittingly funding animal experiments by making donations to these charities.
