On Closing Labs and Throwing Away Food and Stuff

Roger forwarded me the following:

Thursday, May 08, 2008 11:11 AM

It has been announced that the Novartis Vienna lab is closing down in  June. There are 24.863 animals still in the lab – 23,000 mice, 1.700 rats, 93 pigs, 52 rhesus and javan monkeys and hamsters. New animal protection laws ban the killing of animals for no good reason and   Vienna city council has informed activists of the VGT that the animals cannot legally be killed so homes need to be found, or the animals are being taken to Novartis labs in Basel, Switzerland.

This is the last primate lab in Austria.

I Googled the situation and found many articles, some dating back six months, about the impending closing, and none of them had anything to do with animals. ("The Swiss drugmaker, which wants to focus its activities in auto-immune research at its headquarters in Basel, Switzerhand, does not rule out some dermatology activities in Vienna," according to Forbes.com.)

Here’s my question: Novartis will take its show on the road, to Basel. And perhaps some of the animals will go with them. And other animals will be used in Basel. Do you consider the closing of the Vienna lab a victory? If so, what kind of victory? If not, why not? Wouldn’t you rather see Novartis deciding to not use animals?

What are your thoughts?

And as for throwing away food, apparently Britain is also disposing of food amid the global food crisis.

According to WRAP [Waste & Resources Action Programme], an organisation aimed at helping individuals, businesses and local authorities to reduce waste and recycle more, the government-backed study states that the annual total of wasted products adds up to a record £10 bln (€12.7 bln; US$19.6 bln). The study concludes that each day, the following is wasted: 220,000 loaves of bread, 1.6 mln bananas, 550,000 chickens, 5.1 mln potatoes, 660,000 eggs, 1.2 mln sausages, 4.4 mln apples and 440,000 ready meals.

It is also reported that government researchers have established that most of the food waste is made up of completely untouched food products, typically whole chickens that lie uneaten in cupboards and fridges before being discarded.

There’s only so much you can control as an individual. I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir, but trash of all kinds adds to your ecological footprint.

This is costing consumers three times over. Not only do they pay hard-earned money for food they don’t eat, there is also the cost of dealing with the waste this creates. And there are climate-change costs to all of us of growing, processing, packaging, transporting and refrigerating food that only ends up in the bin. Preventing waste in the first place has to remain a top priority.

We should all be mindful of what we’re purchasing, where it came from, how long we plan to use it and how we plan to dispose of it. For more on that, check out The Story of Stuff, a fabulous 20-minute film that will remind you of everything you already know but sometimes don’t act on. You might even learn something. (I did!) Forward it to someone in need of a user-friendly vehicle for your message. (One of my favorite parts is: "The Third World, which is a fancy way of saying Our stuff that got onto somebody else’s land." Then of course there’s: "In this system, if you don’t own or buy a lot of stuff you have no value." Oh, and: "Toxics in, toxics out." And one more: "Distribution means selling all the toxic, contaminated stuff as quickly as possible." No seriously, one more: "Incinerators are really bad.") Enjoy!