Introduction (page 2 of 3)
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This book outlines how legal changes for animals, once thought impossible (and there were very few who even bothered to consider this at all) can actually happen. Then we shall have another way of fighting the injustice that is still perpetrated on animals of all kinds-by science, agribusiness, the pharmaceutical industry, the live animal traders and so on. If only such a change in law could have happened in time to save JoJo, Jade and Dick.

JoJo was the first adult male chimpanzee whom I met in a medical research laboratory-which was, of course, in the basement, with no windows. JoJo was, like the other 9 adult males who shared space with him, confined in a 5 foot by 5 foot cage. There were thick steel bars between JoJo and me. And there were bars on either side of him, and above and below. His view of the world was utterly distorted by thick steel bars. He had one motor tyre in his cell, and a drinking spout. He had been born in the African forest; he had spent more than ten years in the lab. Then there was Jade. For more than seven years she had earned her living by attending up-market birthday parties, and other such social events. When I met her she was about 8 years old and her teeth had been pulled. She was dressed in human clothes. She had been brought, as an "ambassador for her species," to a fund raising dinner hosted by an animal rights group. When we met, I greeted her in chimp style, and after that, from the opposite end of the very large table, she gave her toothless grin every time I caught her eye. I knew she wanted to come over, I knew she had been disciplined to remain in her place, slurping soft foods. I desperately avoided looking at her, filled with anger that she was thus exploited. At the end of the meal she was allowed to come and clamp her arms around me and breathe her sadness into my neck. And there was Dick. When I met him he lived in a small zoo cage with a cement floor. He had a female with him, but clearly had little time for her. He endlessly sat in the corner tapping each finger of his left hand in turn with the index finger of his right hand, in time to the rhythmic opening and shutting of his mouth. In the cage next to him a lone male gorilla endlessly vomited into his hand and reingested the vomit. Dick was the first captive chimpanzee to whom I made a commitment-I would work to try to better his condition, and that of countless other captive apes around the world.

Since I met Dick in 1956, ethical concerns about our treatment of animals are surfacing everywhere; there are, for example, groups of physicians, surgeons, psychologists, veterinarians - and lawyers - who protest abuse of animals and lobby for change. There are more than 7,000 different animal rights/welfare groups in USA alone, and there are increasing numbers of people speaking out against intensive or factory farming of food animals, against trapping, hunting, exotic animals in circuses, movies and advertising, puppy mills - and on and on. And there is growing concern for animal welfare in all parts of the world, including the developing world.

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