About Us

Animal Defenders International group comprises ADI, NAVS and LDF and campaigns to protect animals from abuse and neglect all over the world. ADI also promotes and funds non-animal research instead of unreliable, unethical and unnecessary testing on animals.

ANIMAL DEFENDERS INTERNATIONAL
www.ad-international.org

As our name suggests, Animal Defenders International (ADI)’s mission is to educate, create awareness and alleviate suffering as well as to safeguard and protect animal species and their environment.

Founded in 1990, ADI is an international animal welfare and conservation organisation working to alleviate the suffering of animals and preserve their environment. In the UK, ADI has exposed the miserable living conditions of circus animals and secured convictions of circus animal trainer Mary Chipperfield, her husband and her elephant keeper for cruelty to animals. ADI is seeking a ban on animal circuses and is asking for regulations to be introduced for performing animal-training centres. Its ‘Stop Circus Suffering’ campaign has brought about bans on animal circuses around the world.

Other campaigns include Animals in Entertainment which seeks a halt to the use of performing animals in the entertainment industry (TV, films and advertising as well as live shows) because of the wretched lives they live, isolated from their own kind and subjected to relentlessly harsh training regimes.

In 2005 ADI launched ‘My Mate’s a Primate’ (MMaP), a drive for action to save primates from extinction. MMaP raises awareness of the crisis facing other primates with whom we share our planet, and calls for action against primates being used for bushmeat, entertainment (films, TV, advertising, circuses and zoos), laboratory experiments and in the pet trade.

To mark International Primate Day 2006 held on 1 September, ADI’s annual awareness day to highlight the issues addressed by MMaP, motions were been simultaneously placed before the European Parliament and the US House of Representatives calling for an end to experiments on non-human primates. Motions were also successfully tabled in the UK Parliament, the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly.

ADI has gained a reputation for achieving well-planned and successful animal rescues from all over the world to bring distressed species to safe havens to live out their lives. In February 2007 ADI rescued two ex-circus lions and a tiger that were abandoned in Palmela, Portugal, by Circo Universal and left in cages by the roadside with no water and poor sanitation. The animals were re-homed at the ADI rescue centre in Hoedspruit, South Africa where they will live out the rest of their lives.

Previous rescues have included saving a desperately abused chimpanzee called Toto, chained up in a Chilean circus and re-homing him in Chimfunshi sanctuary in Zambia; an entire circus from Mozambique to South Africa including four tigers, six lions, four horses, ten dogs and one python; and two Bengal tigers from Milimani game reserve to the ADI rescue centre in Hoedspruit, South Africa.

ADI headquarters:
Millbank Tower, Millbank, London SW1P 4QP
Tel: 020 7630 3340
Email: info@ad-international.org


NATIONAL ANTI-VIVISECTION SOCIETY (NAVS)
www.navs.org.uk

Every year, millions of animals suffer and die in cruel and futile experiments. The National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS) campaigns for an end to all animal experiments. Founded in 1875, the NAVS produces technical reports, educational material, books and films to highlight the plight of laboratory animals. Its Lord Dowding Fund for Humane Research funds and supports non-animal scientific and medical research. The NAVS is calling for an end to government secrecy on the animal experimentation licensing process, to allow outside experts to challenge animal tests and suggest alternatives.

It is also lobbying for an effective National Centre for the replacement of animal research, to be funded by industry, charities, and government. The House of Lords Select Committee on Animal Procedures has supported these proposals.

World Lab Animal Week is commemorated all over the world each year around 24 April and was founded by NAVS in 1979. To mark World Lab Animal Week in 2006 the NAVS released a dossier of animal suffering, which highlighted for the first time unspeakable animal experiments in cities across the UK – Cambridge, Durham, Oxford, Newcastle, Southampton, Manchester, London and Edinburgh.

NAVS headquarters:
Millbank Tower, Millbank, London SW1P 4QP
Tel: 020 7630 3340
Email: info@navs.org.uk


LORD DOWDING FUND
www.ldf.org.uk

The objectives of the Lord Dowding Fund for Humane Research are to support, sponsor and fund better methods of scientific and medical research for testing products and curing disease which replace the use of animals; to fund areas of fundamental research which lead to the adoption of non-animal research methodology; to fund, promote and assist medical, surgical and scientific research, learning, and educational training and processes for the purpose of replacing animals in education and training; and to promote and assist any research for the purpose of showing that experiments on animals are harmful or unnecessary to humanity.

In September 2006 LDF successfully launched the world class, high-technology medical facility at the Aston University MRI Research Centre. The fMRI scanner, funded by LDF, is at least twice as powerful as fMRI scanners in hospitals and enables incredibly sensitive study of the human brain and neurological disorders. The new facility is acknowledged to be a milestone not only in terms of technology – as the most powerful of its kind in the UK - but also in terms of replacing the use of animals in research as it facilitates the latest human-based scientific analysis of the brain.

LDF is currently helping scientists to develop software programmes that replace the use of animals in university science teaching. Professor of e-learning at Edinburgh University, David Dewhurst, is making effective computer based learning alternatives available to universities everywhere and has recently collected a Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher Education, one of the highest honours in his profession.

LDF headquarters:
Millbank Tower, Millbank, London SW1P 4QP
Tel: 020 7630 3340
Email: info@ldf.org.uk