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Brut went to La Tanière, a refuge zoo where there are 250 laboratory rabbits that were saved from euthanasia. Patrick Violas and his team saved them and hope to give these little animals a new life.
In Nogent-Le-Phaye, near Chartres, Chloé, Agathe and their family came to adopt a rabbit from La Tanière, a zoo-refuge which was created by Patrick Violas and his wife in 2016. 250 laboratory rabbits saved from the euthanasia are among the residents of the shelter and 90 rabbits are still waiting for their new families. Sometimes it is the laboratories that call the shelter to entrust them with animals or, most of the time, it is associations that call them directly. “There weren’t many people to make 250 rabbits like that, so they called us“, explains Patrick Violas.
Since its creation, La Tanière has collected more than 2,000 animals, retired from performing arts or laboratories, from animal trafficking or mistreated. The target of the shelter is above all children to whom Patrick Violas wants to explain the notion of animal welfare, a primordial value in his eyes. For a rabbit, it takes 50 euros: the animals are identified and sterilized.
Each year in France, two million animals are used for research. Experiments are made on them for drugs but also to see whether or not they will be able to reproduce in captivity in small areas, with the aim of intensifying breeding.