The global actor, director and also city councillor of Rio de Janeiro, Cláudio Cavalcanti , had a law of his authorship endorsed today by the Mayor. The law 4.685/2007 was directed to forbid things like “mishandling” and “torture” of animals in research, and the practice of “spanking” or putting the animals to fire. Most people would find this OK, but it’s not just that, the law also forbids “death” and the use of “cutting instruments” and “toxic substances”. In fact, it actually goes as far as to forbid the “use of animals in scientific experiments of any kind”. (art 2, paragraph 1, item VIII)

The text of the law starts with a very interesting list of examples of what beings are understood as being animals. (!!?… Go figure law making…)

I wonder how will scientists be able to determine accurately the toxicity of substances in order to follow the law rigorously!…

It’s only strange that the mayor has accepted this quite controversial law, and vetoed a previous one regarding vivissection

Their argument for the end of experiments with animals is that “nowdays we already have alternatives”…

Don’t miss the cute picture of his holding a kitten… I’m not quite sure he is handling the animal properly. (Neither of the three, including the human one, not protected by his law)

Today (2007-11-07) it was found out that the law was approved by mistake. A modified version was accepted, but it came out of the Constitution and Justice Committee with the old text…

The federal government even started to study some form to turn the municipal law ineffective by creating a federal regulation for the use of animals in research.