Programs and Campaigns
IDA works for the protection of animals used in scientific research, food and clothing production, entertainment and sport, and other areas. Its methods include coordinating protests and nonviolent civil disobedience actions including sit-ins, lock downs and banner hangings.
Ongoing programs include a campaign aimed at improving conditions for elephants in zoos and circuses. IDA was one of many animal protection organizations that helped shut down the Coulston Foundation, once the largest chimpanzee research center in the world.
The organisation's other achievements include:
- IDA investigator Ben White setting free dolphins off the coast of Japan by swimming underwater to cut the nets that imprisoned them.
- Campaigining against the hunting of goats and buffalo in Santa Catalina Island, California
- Creating a chimpanzee sanctuary and education center in Cameroon in 1999 and a sanctuary for abused and abandoned animals in rural Mississippi.
- Spearheading the rescue of hundreds of dogs and cats after a devastating "firestorm" swept through the Oakland/Berkeley hills in California, destroying more than 3,500 homes.
- Preventing the bow hunting of Tule elk at the Point Reyes National Seashore.
- Ending New York University's crack cocaine experiments on monkeys as part of the Coulston Foundation. In 1995, the US Department of Agriculture backed IDA's claims by accusing the foundation of "keeping several dozen chimpanzees in undersize cages and causing the avoidable deaths of at least five chimpanzees".
- Campaigning against Rockefeller University’s neurophysiology experiments on cats. This campaign was supported by PETA. IDA claimed that cats were fully conscious during experiments. The university has denied this. After 18 months of protests by IDA, the university ended the experiments in 1998.
- Ending brain cancer experiments on beagle puppies in 2001 in Phoenix, Arizona by launching a lawsuit against a scientist.
- Campaigned and eventually convinced the city of San Francisco, California to have meat-free Mondays.
- Guardian Campaign: a campaign to replace the term "animal owner" with "animal guardian", with the goal to change the character and perception of relationships between humans and animals.
Read more about this topic: In Defense Of Animals
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