The cruelty of animal testing

Chemical, pharmaceutical, and medical research laboratories use live animals to test everything from shampoo to surgical procedures. There are more than 115 million dogs, cats, rabbits, monkeys, and other mammals that suffer and die each year, but 80 percent of the lab animals used – mice, rats and birds – are not protected by the Animal Welfare Act, and therefore are not counted. For research and teaching labs, animals are merely disposable tools.

Are the animals hurt during testing?

Animals endure chemicals being dripped into their eyes, injected into their bodies, forced up their nostrils or forced down their throats. They are addicted to drugs, forced to inhale/ingest toxic substances, subjected to maternal deprivation, deafened, blinded, burned, stapled, and infected with disease viruses. These treatments are exempt from anti-cruelty statutes, and worse yet, undercover investigations have exposed violations of animal welfare policies and cases of extreme negligence at labs and universities.

Is there an alternative?

In addition to being humane, the alternatives to animal tests are efficient and reliable. Successful alternatives include the use of human volunteers, cell and tissue cultures, synthetic membranes, statistics, scanning technologies, and computer models. Computer simulations and multimedia CD-ROM's are more economical and effective than using live animal “specimens” as teaching tools. Students can borrow software designed to satisfy course requirements by contacting the Ethical Science Education Coalition, the National Anti-Vivisection Society, or the Humane Society of the US.

What you can do:

• Write to the U.S. National Institutes of Health and tell them you don’t want your tax dollars used to underwrite animal experiments.
• Write to the U.S. EPA and FDA, urging them to stop requiring cruel and obsolete animal tests, and to approve other testing methods.
• Don’t own stock in companies that conduct animal tests.
• Give only to charities that do not experiment on animals.

Many Americans appreciate the companionship of a dog or cat. We care so much about our beloved pets that we treat them like part of the family. We buy them clothes, serve them special meals and treats, and if the need arises, we will spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on medical expenses without a second thought.

So it is no surprise that most people cringe when they hear that cats and dogs are considered a delicacy in other countries. Who could imagine that these sweet little animals that we love as our companions are regularly killed and eaten by civilized people in different cultures. But consider the cow for example. They are revered as sacred by millions of people in the East, but in the United States tens of thousands of these gentle, passive creatures are ruthlessly slaughtered each day.

How can we justify this selective love and care? What a cold and heartless world it would be if each of us only cared about the suffering of those we know, and ignored the pain of everyone else. If you eat any type of meat, please consider the trail of suffering that brings that animal to your plate. Never in a million years would we allow our pets to be sent to a factory farm, only to die a painful death in an inhumane slaughterhouse. We should be compassionate to all animals great and small, not just the ones we know personally as our pets. You have a choice. Please do not contribute to the suffering of innocent animals. Become a vegetarian.

TESTING ON ANIMALS

Only vertebrate animals (mammals, birds, fish and amphibians) and some invertebrates such as octopuses are defined as ‘animals’ by European legislation governing animal experiments. Shockingly, in the USA rats, mice, fish, amphibians and birds are not defined as animals under animal experiments regulations. That means no legal permission to experiment on them is needed and they are not included in any statistics.

Animals used in experiments are usually bred for this purpose by the laboratory or in breeding facilities. It’s a cruel, multi-million dollar industry. Cruelty Free International believes that all animals are equally important. A dog bred for research is still a dog who could otherwise live a happy life in a loving home.