With Mel Broughton - SPEAK UP AGAINST ANIMAL TESTING - Anniversary Episode 26

Marking the podcast's anniversary with a subject that was my, and my guest's, entry into the Animal Rights movement.

Mel Broughton has been at the heart of campaigning for the abolition of animal testing for 4 decades. This dedication has not come without a price. Mel has served time both in prison and on license, living under severe restrictions, for his part in some of those campaigns. This year marks the seventeenth anniversary of SPEAK, founded by Mel to be a voice for the animals who are held captive and hidden away in laboratories. SPEAK have since had a consistent, weekly presence outside the Oxford laboratory.

Anti-vivisection used to be a corner-stone of the Animal Rights movement, and yet in more recent years has become all but invisible. This is something that concerns both Mel and me, as well as many other activists.

In this podcast, we explore a little of the history of the anti-vivisection movement and how it became the catalyst for the burgeoning radical Animal Rights movement, how it got left by the wayside after the hard hitting campaigns of the 80s & 90s, the positive drive for change within the scientific community, and what the AR movement can do to send a clear, strong message against animal testing.

CW brief references to the distressing violations that other animals endure in laboratories.