The vast majority of painful animal experimentation is scientifically unnecessary, medically unreliable, shockingly cruel, crude, cumbersome, expensive and has no relation at all to human survival or the elimination of human disease. Every year millions of research animals are killed using tax and consumer dollars testing new products like cosmetics, perfumes and household products, everything from detergents to floor wax.
Regardless, traditional product testing and experimentation on animals does not always keep unsafe products off the market. Animal reactions may be grossly distorted and misleading possibly resulting in human suffering when so-called proven safe drugs and products get taken off the market following harmful or fatal side effects in humans.
Research labs may seldom consider alternative research techniques even though new technologies exist that have been proven to be far cheaper, more exact, more humane and more closely able to duplicate human cells and tissues than anything ever deducted from animal research experiments. Not all research animals are pigs, cows, mice, guinea pigs and other wildlife. Unfortunately, your pet dog or cat ending up at a local animal shelter could also become a victim of cruel animal experimentation because local “pound seizure” laws force unwilling animal shelters to turn over thousands of lost dogs and cats to research labs.
All animals everywhere suffer pain, loneliness, fear and confusion. Of course, apologists for animal abuse, and those who may profit from it, continue trying to convince the public that animal pain and cruelty is a small price to pay “in the name of science” even though animal physiologies differ from each other and from humans too. Remember, there is no restriction whatsoever on what experimenters may do to animals once university, federally funded and privately funded researchers get the animals behind closed doors.
SUPPLEMENTAL SOURCE: PEOPLE FOR THE ETHICAL TREATMENT OF ANIMALS (PETA) JANUARY 2004