Animal Advocates Blast Volkswagen at Auto Show

In Defense of Animals Urges Automaker to End Experiments on Birds

San Francisco, Calif.—San Rafael-based In Defense of Animals (IDA) has launched a campaign to convince the Volkswagen Foundation to stop funding experiments in which European robins, garden warblers, and finches are captured, caged, and decapitated. The experiments 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.

Brandishing a giant banner that reads “VW – Stop Killing Birds,” activists will gather at the 50th Annual San Francisco International Auto Show tomorrow afternoon.

When: Tuesday, November 27, 2007, 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Where: Moscone Convention Center, 747 Howard Street (at 4th Street), San Francisco

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 has 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.