Dear friends,

probably many of you already know the Italian antivivisection
campaign "Close down Morini" - where Morini is a farm which has been
selling animals to vivisection laboratories (dogs and rodents) for
more than 30 years. You can find info about the campaign on the
website: http://www.morinicampaign.tk

Anyway, we are now here to ask your help for a specific purpose: now
it's the time to make a STRONG pressure on the Mayor of S. Polo
d'Enza, the small town where the farm is located. Why? Well, let's
take a few steps back... two years ago, thanks to the huge protests
from the public opinion all over Italy, horrified by the use of
young beagle dogs in the vivisection laboratories, the Emilia
Romagna Regional Council approved a regional law stating that "cats
and dogs cannot be sold and used for experiments all over the
region". This law has caused a lot of problems to the Morini farm,
because its main income came from selling the dogs, more than
rodents or any other animal, to the laboratories.

But the vivisectors pressured the national Italian Government, so
the judgement of the validity of this law has been submitted to
the "Constitutional Court". The Court has been examining the case
for more than one year, during which time fortunately the law has
been applied, and the farm has not been authorized to sell dogs to
the vivisectors.

Few weeks ago came the result of the Court examination: a bad
result, because they decided that the law is not valid - they said
that a single
region cannot decide on this matter.

But at the moment the farm cannot sell dogs to the laboratories,
yet, because in order to have the necessary permission renewed, the
Mayor of the town must give an explicit authorization.

The former Mayor was absolutely in favour of the Morini farm, but A
FEW
WEEKS AGO A NEW MAYOR HAS BEEN ELECTED!
So it's really important to make pressure on him to convince him to
"reconvert" the farm to another activity.

The interesting and new event is that a few days ago an "Open
Meeting" of citiziens and companies operating in S. Polo has been
created.
They wrote an "open letter" to the Mayor, asking him to stop the
activity of the farm, both because of its cruelty and because of the
damage to the "image" of the region and consequently to the business
opportunities of all the other local companies**.

At this crucial moment, the Mayor must feel the responsibility for
such a choice. It's a fundamental moment.

For this reason, we invite all of your to send him and all the
regional council members, a "strong and clear" message. Here we
present a draft
message, but you are invited to write a personal one!

During the "Open Meeting", a network of animals shelter has been
activated, and they are ready to accomodate ALL the animals now kept
in the farm.

The complete text of the "open letter" to the Mayor can be found at
the
page:
http://www.novivisezione.org/morini.html


Please, take part in this protest!
Thank you very much.

Massimo Tettamanti, Marina Berati
www.Novivisezione.org

----------

Draft message
---------------------------------------

Dear Mayor of S. Polo d'Enza,
Dear Regional Councillors,

having been informed of the creation in S. Polo of an "Open Meeting
on the Morini case", which asked you not to allow the Morini farm to
keep selling dogs and cats to the experimentation laboratories, I
want to express my full support to the goals of the Open Meeting.

Given that the Morini farm has been given the opportunity to
be "converted" to a cruelty-free activity (thus ceasing to sell any
kind of animals to the labs), I think that this is the right way to
go, and invite you, as a Mayor of the city, to do what is in your
power to reach this important and humane goal.

Best regards,
name, country
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