Above: Members of the ADAV team meet with Don Davies, MP

It’s been a busy year. As we move into the new year, we wanted to take a moment to review 2024 and highlight some of the activities we have engaged in. We are 100% volunteer run and all of this was made possible by our dedicated supporters.

• Completed a strenuous freedom of information request with SFU. This resulted in the university finally committing to release their animal use in research numbers annually. Previously they were refusing to release them. This constitutes a significant win!
• Launched our parliamentary petition on the modernization of drug development in Canada asking that Canada drop the requirement that new drugs be tested on animals – a requirement that the U.S. has already dropped. Our parliamentary petition was sponsored by Don Davies, MP.
• Tabled at events like the Vancouver VegFest and the Delta Animal Shelter Community Expo: spreading consciousness about the plight of animals used in research, collecting petition signatures, and drawing awareness to the importance of directing donation dollars only to organizations that don’t experiment on animals.
• In April, we joined the global protest of animal research on a busy corner of downtown Vancouver.
• We hosted Ava, TAVA’s goodwill ambassador for cruelty-free science as she toured Vancouver.
• We watched proudly as one of our scientific advisors accepted a Young Researcher of the Year Award from LUSH Handmade Cosmetics.
• We made our Humane Charities Campaign felt at the CIBC Run for the Cure, the Terry Fox Run, the Alzheimer’s Walk and at the SFU Donor Appreciation Night. In doing so we were alerting people to the option to donate in future to organizations that don’t experiment on animals.
• On Sept. 13th we protested the appearance of a controversial monkey experimenter who was scheduled to speak at UBC. The event ended up getting postponed and a sign went up indicating this just before the event was scheduled to take place. It seems we had an impact.
• We conducted a demonstration against animal research outside the NeurIPS 2024 Conference on Dec. 14th after being tipped of by PETA that a researcher whose work involved blinding monkeys was taking part with a poster presentation.
• We continued to educate the public about the plight of animals in research and more modern, human-centric alternatives through our website, Facebook, and electronic newsletter. As well we offered opportunities to “take action” on this issue plus other issues that involve animal suffering.