02/10/2007
Air Canada has stopped shipments of beagles for medical research to Europe after protests from its passengers.
Beagles have been shipped from Montreal to Paris by Air Canada for many years. Last spring this company was carrying out one of these routinary shipments when the passengers travelling on that flight were able to hear the dogs yelping (since nonhuman animals who are transported by plane travel in dreadful conditions, one can well imagine they had reasons be howling). Passengers were shocked about this, and their upset grew when they later saw these animals were unloaded from the plane when they got to Paris. After knowing that they were going to be used in laboratories, they protested about this, claiming that Air Canada should not be involved in any activity of the kind.
Spokepersons of Air Canada commented that the company was surprised about the complaints, pointing out that it was the first time something like this has happened. It seems that so far passengers had not been aware of kind of the cargo the company was conveying. Now, as a result of the complaints, Air Canada has decided to stop the transport of beagles from Montreal to Paris (since it has a policy of stopping any shipment if it disturbs passengers).
The company which sends this animals to France is Marshall BioResources which, breeds other nonhuman animals such as mongrel dogs, ferrets and “mini-pigs” for animal experimentation. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has pointed out that Marshall has all the legal authorizations that are needed in order to transport the beagles, since the kennel where they are bred satisfy the required stipulations and the animals have passed the health requirements. So there is no legal restriction to such a commercial activity. These is not surprising at all, given that nonhuman animals are considered resources available for us to use.
Air Canada’s decision does not mean in itself a real change for nonhuman animals. In fact, the permit that Marshall had to ship animals from Montreal has been reassigned, and Marshall is now apparently sending the animals from Toronto. Moreover: even if no other company starts transporting the beagles from Canada to Europe, in as much as there is a demand for experiments on animals, either from private companies or from public administrations, their use as laboratoty tools will go on. Even if Marshall did not send the animals, others would raise them and send them: others providers would soon appear, we can be sure about that.
However, this piece of news is interesting for another reason. Cases such as these, in which the public becomes aware of what happens to those nonhuman animals who are exploited are exceptional. And it is significant that when they occur they provoke such a positive reaction. It is in fact very likely that those who travelled from Montreal to Paris that day will see from now the use of nonhuman animals in another light. Of course they knew before that nonhumans were used, but surely most (if not all) of them had never reflected before in any depth whether this was something justified. This shows how much work we still have to do in order to reach the people, in order to help them think of what they hadn’t thought before. There are lots of potential veg(etari)ans and antispeciesists who just go on with their lives using nonhuman animals simply because they haven’t been faced with the arguments in favor of a different lifestyle and the evidence of the harm humans systematically inflict on nonhumans.