Live animals tortured, violently slammed against the wall or decapitated, dirty cages, factories without the minimum hygienic and environmental conditions. These are the details that emerge from the investigation coordinated by the Catanzaro Prosecutor’s Office which led to the execution of 12 precautionary measures against some teachers of the Magna Graecia University and managers of the provincial health authority. Among the accusations made against some suspects there is also that of the mistreatment and killing of animals within the so-called “animals”, scientific laboratories set up in the Catanzaro university and used for experimentation on animals for research purposes. A real “horror film”, what the ordinance describes on the basis of testimonies of some of the operators who worked in one of these “animals”. In particular, one witness says: «the cages were constantly dirty and we had to clean them even though it was the responsibility of the animal husbandry worker. Then, it often happened that during the weekend the power went out and, for this reason, we found the lights on or off, differently from how we had left them previously. I want to point out that this was not good since all the stabled animals needed to receive light or darkness in the opposite way to the external one…”.
Another testimony adds: «The suppression procedures were not always respected. I personally proceeded with the euthanization only if I could sedate the animal and could kill it according to the procedures. However, I have witnessed some cases of animal decapitations without anesthesia… It happened that, because of this, the other rats smelled the blood resulting from the decapitation and became agitated. This can also constitute a problem for scientific purposes, because if the other animals become agitated, in addition to becoming unmanageable, they produce cortisol which affects the results of the analyses… Finally, I remember that when I had recently arrived to work at the animal facility, I it was said that, on at least one occasion, to suppress an animal, it seems he was thrown against the wall…”. And finally, a final witness says that «from what I remember, given that the events occurred a few years ago, the aforementioned decapitation procedure was rather bloody and the animals were alive»
