Update from Durham University Animal Rights
This is what we've been focusing on this term:
'Chickens Out!'
Working with Compassion in World Farming to gather support for the EU Ban on Battery Cages due to come into effect in 2012 (but currently under threat by the industry and certain EU member states).
We've organised several petition signature collection events and there's also an online petition going to Hilary Benn when it's reached enough signatures - www.thepetitionsite.com/14/support-the-eu-ban-on-battery-cages
We've also had day of action against Tesco during CIWF's 'Tesco Action Week' because Tesco is the biggest UK supermarket that hasn't yet pledged to go cage-free. Pictures from the demo will be on our website shortly.
Tonight we're running a bar-crawl through all the college bars at Durham University to collect signatures for a further petition going to our college catering managers (Durham has 12 catered colleges) to add pressure to convince them to switch to free-range. Every college currently uses around 400 battery-farmed shell eggs in their catering and our main aim with this campaign is to get a change in the catering budget for all the colleges that will allow them to switch to free range. Another major issue is finding reliable suppliers that can supply that many eggs to each college but we're working on it!
Next term our main campaign focus (although we will also be continuing on the battery cage front of course) will be vivisection. All we know for certain about our own university is that the biology department experiment on rats but we are trying to find out under Freedom of Information what other animals the university has a licence for. We're planning an awareness week for the end of next term with guest speakers from Europeans for Medical Progress Trust, BUAV, Oxford SPEAK and others, as well as film screenings of the 'Earthlings' film and others.
I'm also in touch with someone in the North East who wants to put on a film screening of 'Behind the Mask' for Keith Mann who will also be giving a talk about it. When this event and the awareness week are organised I will be in touch again.
That's all for now... 
Jess (DUAR President)