Animal Advocates to Volkswagen: Stop the Killing

In Defense of Animals Begins Campaign to End Experiments on Birds

Auburn Hills, Mich. – San Rafael, California-based In Defense of Animals (IDA) has launched a campaign to convince Volkswagen to stop funding experiments in which European robins, garden warblers, and finches are captured, caged, and decapitated. The experiments, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, have been performed at Oldenburg University in Germany and Duke University in North Carolina, where the songbirds’ retinas and brains are cut out after decapitation, to study migration.

Protesters holding signs that read "VW – Farfromhuman" and "VW – Stop Killing Birds" will gather in downtown Detroit this afternoon.

When: Tuesday, November 13, 2007, 12:00 noon

Where: Spirit of Detroit Statue at the Coleman Young Municipal Building, intersection of Woodward Ave. at W. Jefferson Ave.

In a September 13 letter to VW’s new President and CEO, Stefan Jacoby, IDA commended the Foundation’s non-animal research and requested an immediate halt to all experiments on birds. The VW Foundation was started in 1961 with money from the automaker.

The company failed to respond to follow-up communications.

Birds used in U.S. experiments, such as those funded by Volkswagen at Duke are not protected under the Animal Welfare Act, which sets minimal care standards for animals used in U.S. laboratories.

"The public will be outraged to discover that the same company that markets "Fahrvergnugen"—driving enjoyment—also funds the terrors of bird experimentation," says Mary Beth Sweetland, IDA’s Director of Research and Investigations. "The Volkswagen Foundation has absolutely no reason to fund neurological experiments on birds, and the public must be assured that it will stop."

More information, including a copy of IDA’s letter to VW is available at www.vivisectioninfo.org/campaigns/volkswagen .

###