developed world. Now, Italy has become host to a major breakthrough in preventing cruelty to dogs by shutting down a major breeding facility that provided beagle puppies to labs for vivisection.Life with Dogs yesterday reported that rangers and forest service personnel in Montichiari, northern Italy, raided the Greenhill Farm and shut it down. They took into their custody 2500 dogs present at the facility as well as arrested some of the staff there for investigation. Life with Dogs tells the dogs rescued from the facility will now be relocated and the animal rights activists are celebrating this closure of the infamous breeding facility.
The Greenhill Farm had been warned by activists against continuing the practice of breeding dogs for torturous treatment at labs. In April this year, hundreds of activists raided the Greenhill facility and liberated dozens of beagles from the facility where they were “born to die and sentenced to suffer”. It was this raid that created a wide attention toward the problem of breeding for torturous lab testing of dogs in Italy and eventually led to yesterday’s climactic move which has officially stopped the breeding practice.
Beagles suffer in many testing facilities in various parts of Europe and America. Last year, in November, several members of this breed were rescued from a testing lab in Spain and taken to Los Angeles for a natural life, safe from imprisonment and painful treatment at testing facilities. In the United States, around 70 thousand dogs are reportedly tested each year, subject to most horrifying conditions and brutal deaths due to various invasive procedures inflicted on them. Most of these dogs are from the beagle breed as these are small, docile dogs, easy to handle in captivity.
With the closure of the Greenhill Farm, Italy has set an example for the US and the rest of the world as to granting dogs and other animals the right to live without pain and torture brought on by humans. The senate in Italy is even considering banning altogether the breeding of dogs and other animals – cats and primates – to supply for lab testing or research work.
