Brief Explanation

In February 2013, the New Zealand Government proposed a bill to regulate the sales of psychoactive substances. Psychoactive substances being the ingredients used to create products like synthetic imitations of ecstasy and cannabis – or in other words, “legal highs”. This all sounded well intentioned but it came with nasty side effects. This new bill allowed for legal highs to be tested on innocent animals such as dogs and rabbits. The introduction saw hundreds of outraged citizens take to New Zealand streets holding pictures of Beagle dogs protesting: “Why should I die for you to get high?” Months of relentless lobbying and petitions from people around the country were rebuffed and the government announced that the bill would go ahead, animal testing and all. Paw Justice, a small two-man animal-rights organisation, didn’t accept this decision. But it knew signatures on yet another petition would not be enough. Stopping this bill demanded taking a different tack; of creating something much more formidable and explosive than just names on a page. On 26th September 2013 the animals of New Zealand went on strike. By working together with media companies, zoos, dogparks, online video-producers and bloggers, Paw Justice took away all the animals that entertained us every day and replaced them with pamphlets and signs calling on New Zealanders to join their strike. In a single day the strike grew into a global movement with thousands of people joining the strike by sharing pictures of their pets protesting, sharing Paw Justice’s campaign videos and reaching out to their friends. A campaign that started with Paw Justice’s frustration with an obstinate government grew to reach more than 26 million people and receive support from almost every country in the world. With a campaign that reached more than 5.8 times the population of New Zealand, Paw Justice had turned on a kind of public pressure that the New Zealand Government couldn’t ignore. They could no longer brush of the 58,000 signatures that Paw Justice presented. Paw Justice wanted to change the law to ban the testing of psychoactive substances on animals. And that’s exactly what they did. On the morning of Monday, 5 May 2014, Prime Minister John Key made an historical announcement - a total ban on testing on animals implemented that very week.