Association against Animal Factories

(Verein gegen Tierfabriken)

The Association against Animal Facories is an organization dedicated to reduce exploitation or abuse of animals and stop them in the long run. VGT is an independent association and belongs to no political party.

The basic idea of VGT is to establish animal rights. There is no ethical acceptable reason to limit the apportionment of basic rights to members of human species only. The ability to suffer is the defining criterion for affiliation to a community which guarantees base rights for all creatures. These base rights are to be protected against all human violations to other species, may they be cultural, historical or religious motivated violations.

VGT follows the vision of a fair, ecological and ethical responsible living together of all beings in the world. The association uses modern and efficient instruments of political activism as well as sedulous convincing and awareness training to settle association philosophy in our society. VGT operates under a strict non-violence policy.

Main aims of the association are:

fight against the cruel habit of animal farming
animal protection shall be included in the austrian federal constitution
abolition of export refund for live animal transportation
pushing trough the already passed prohibition of battery farming
stop battery egg trade
achieve ban of songbird trapping
stop import of fur (especially cat and dog fur) to Austria
ban fur production from the European Union
improvement of living conditions of farm animals, especially:
- no more farrowing crates for pigs
- pigs and cattle are not to be kept on slatted floors without sprinkled in straw
- ban of painful medical procedure (castration, dehorning...) on animals without anaesthesia and without aftercare in case the animals suffer from after effects
- ban of mutilation (debeaking, tail docking, teeth grinding, mulesing) which shall adapt the animals to factory farming
abolition of hunting, especially:
- ban of abandonning captive-bred animals for hunt
- ban of canned hunt (where animals are hunted in an enclosure that usually leaves no escape for them)
- baiting animals (like foxes, badgers or beavers) by using other animals is meant to be forbidden for hunters or rangers
abolition of animal experimentation, in a first step:
- a complete reform of the animal experimentation act, especially:
  - ban of experiments on primates
  - ban of animal experiments in veterinary training
  - animal testings are the responsibility of the animal welfare ombudsmen or ombudswomen
  - the description of animal experiments means any experiment on any kind of animal (including invertebrates). Animal experiments means also testings on killed or terminal narcotised animals
  - introducing an independent animal experiments inspectorate for all kind of animal tests. The inspectorate does continous but announced control checks and guarantees scientific and ethic evaluation.
Keeping up public sociopolitical discussion on a wide range of aspects about the relationship between humans and animals and animal rights
promoting vegetarian and vegan lifestyle/nutrition

We also inform about:

the disastrous consequences of agro industry on basic life fundaments soil, water and air (waste of resources, environmental protection)
exploitation of developing and least developed countries (export refund, compensation, farm animal food) correlating with agro industries
health risks connected with consumption of animal derived products