National Anti-Vivisection Society
The National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS) is an international not-for-profit animal protection group, based in London, working to end animal testing, and focused on the replacement of animals in research with advanced, scientific techniques. Since 2006, the NAVS has operated its international campaigns under the working name Animal Defenders International (ADI), and the two groups now work together under the ADI name. History The NAVS of the UK is the world's first anti-vivisection organisation, founded in 1875 by Frances Power Cobbe, a humanitarian who authored articles and leaflets opposing animal experiments. Many notable people of the day supported NAVS. The Society was formed on 2 December 1875 in Victoria Street, London, under the name of the Victoria Street Society. At the time there were about 300 experiments on animals each year. Public opposition to vivisection led the Government to appoint the First Royal Commission on Vivisection in July 1875; it reported its findings on 8 January 1876, recommending that special legislation be enacted to control vivisection. This led to the Cruelty to Animals Act 1876, which reached the statute book on 15 August 1876. This Act remained in force for 110 years, until it was replaced by the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986. The Cruelty to Animals Act 1876 regulated legal vivisection, as well as providing secrecy to the vivisectors and to the laboratories, with no public accountability. The Home Office awarded licences to vivisectors in secret and the locations of laboratories were secret. No access was allowed, whether Member of Parliament, media, public, or local authority. And so, the numbers of animals used and the number of licences awarded continued to rise for a century, protected by successive governments. However, opposition to vivisection also increased, and in 1897 the growing Victoria Street Society changed its name to the National Anti-Vivisection Society. In 1969 NAVS formed the International Association against Painful Experiments on Animals (IAAPEA). In 1990 the Society, having outgrown the premises in Harley Street it had occupied since 1964 (a move engineered by the then Secretary, Wilfred Risdon), moved to Goldhawk Road, London, with a subsequent move in 2006 to Millbank Tower, London. Founder From the outset the Victoria Street Society had demanded the total abolition of vivisection, and whilst this has always been, and remains the prime objective of the NAVS, at a Council meeting on 9 February 1898 the following resolution was passed: The resolution was carried by 29 votes to 23. Miss Cobbe did not approve of this as she did not want the Society to promote any measure short of abolition. As a result, after the Resolution was passed, Miss Cobbe left the NAVS and formed the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection to demand total and immediate abolition of animal experiments. This resolution of 1898 has remained the policy of the NAVS. Brown Dog affair In 1906, a statue was erected in Battersea Park of a brown terrier dog, one of a number of animals described in the journals of two Swedish anti-vivisection