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Research on dogs: a Catch-22 for animal welfare advocates
October 25th, 2012 1 Comment
During the summer an Italian court ordered the temporary closure of one of Europe’s biggest dog breeding companies.
After an intense campaign by policymakers and animal rights groups, the Green Hill animal breeding firm closed its doors, having handed more than 2,500 dogs over to animal rights campaigners in line with the court ruling.
Activists – and plenty of ordinary tweeters who just love dogs – celebrated. If you almost never give much thought to animal research, a headline about dogs in Italy being saved rather than sacrificed looks like good news.
But could the Green Hill story prove to be a pyrrhic victory for animal rights campaigners?
Does Europe want to be a research hub?
October 19th, 2012 2 Comments
Listen to just about any European politician these days and you are guaranteed to hear some or all of the following keywords: ‘jobs’, ‘growth’, ‘innovation’, and ‘research’.
Read the Europe 2020 strategy and the Innovation Union policy and the message from EU policymakers is clear. Europe says it needs to be in the Premier League of scientific R&D, not just because research delivers solutions that help improve our lives, but because we want to develop and produce things that have value; things people in the US, Japan, China and elsewhere will buy from us.
Rhetoric vs reality
But what is the reality behind the rhetoric? And is Europe sending mixed signals about its support for research?
