COBAY ANIMALS: raising and selling dogs for laboratory use

Mice, dogs, primates… France raises animals for research laboratories. Some are even programmed to be born sick.

Hidden in the heart of the Puisaye forest (30 km from Auxerre), the CEDS (Center d’Élevage du Domaine des Souches) is a company that thrives in breeding and selling dogs for public and private laboratories for experimentation.

In France, it is estimated that at least 3 to 5 million animals are sacrificed each year as an experiment, behind the 11.5 million animals tortured every year in European laboratories, a whole economy is hidden. Among other things, there are food suppliers specially designed to develop diseases, equipment companies for experiments, carriers, but also specialized breeders.

These successful laboratories are just a suffering industry that unscrupulously tests products from industries (pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, household products).

The CEDS is a major certified supplier of these laboratories and produces a good turnover, including export. The main clients of the ECSR: INSERM, medical facs, foreign public and private universities, national veterinary schools, private laboratories, research units, Safe Diet (manufacturers of custom-made dog food used for various experiments).

In Gannat, Auvergne, for example, the Harlan company has made mice and dogs its business. “In mice, human cancer cells are grown and between 1,500 and 2,000 dogs are grown per drug test.

Animals are used in four areas: Education in biology and medicine; toxicology; Applied search basic research. The question of replacing them with methods capable of providing data relevant to humans arises in different ways depending on the field concerned. The adoption of “alternative” methods is a scientific and legal problem.

In Gannat, dogs are all beagles. “Beagle is not too big, too small a race, and since it licks your hand whatever you do, it is experimented with without analgesics or anesthesia!”, explains André Ménache, director of the Scientific Committee on Antidote Europe, which aims to inform about the damage that animal experimentation causes to human health and the environment, and to promote alternative methods, explains director of livestock at La Montagne newspaper.

In Mézilles, in the Yonne, beagle is also the breadwinner of the managers of the Center d’Élevage du Domaine des Souches (CEDS).

It should be noted that this laboratory is financed, among other things, by the French association against myopathies (which organizes the Telethon every year). Donations to Telethon are therefore used to finance the CEDS and, more generally, animal experiments.

The activity of the CEDS is condemnable. Its director, Michel Carré (former INSERM researcher), says that “animals are at the service of man” (article by the Yonne Républicaine of 8 September 2012). Elsewhere in Europe, similar farms have already been closed. Cities refuse animal experimentation on their territory and declare that animals are living beings and are not laboratory equipment.

Not only mice and dogs are raised in France, there are also monkeys, the primatology center of Niederhausbergen (Alsace), run by the University of Strasbourg, which hosts 800 primates each year. More than 50-60% of them are in transit. From farms in Asia and Mauritius, macaques are quarantined and resold (about 5,000 to 8,000 euros per animal) to biomedical research laboratories. The Ministry of Agriculture has authorized the extension of the center: according to the new standards, it will be able to accommodate up to 1,600 monkeys, most of whom will be torn down.

It is time to stop referring to animal research and using “alternative” methods, knowing that animal testing is scientifically unreliable and very expensive.
Drugs tested on animals and declared harmless can have dramatic human consequences.