Have you ever wondered how animals are used for our everyday products? We don’t think about how our products are actually made, we just want to know the price and the quality of the product. Each year, more than 100 million animals, including mice, rats, frogs, dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters, guinea pig, monkeys, fish, and birds are killed in U.S laboratories. Animals are used for medical training, curiosity-driven experimentation and chemical, drug, food, and cosmetic testing. The animals are treated poorly in the laboratories. We don’t want to know what happens behind the doors of a laboratory, we just want the product. Even though people test on animals it still doesn’t mean that the tests or the products are reliable.

Animals are not human beings, therefore they make poor test subjects. Animal experiments also are a waste of lives. It can be very scary, stressful and can add distress to an animal when it is locked up in a cage. Most of the time, the animals make poor test subjects because of all the added distress. The animals are burned, irritated, crushed, shocked, poisoned and infected. Fear and anxiety are daily parts of their lives, which is not supposed to be apart of everyday human lives. The animals are basically tortured and it is so unnecessary.

Animals are tortured every day, even though Scientists know that there are other alternatives, such as organs-on-chips, human cell-derived skin models and research with human volunteers. Organs-on-chips, developed by Harvard’s Wyss Institute, contain human cells. The chips can be used instead of animals in disease research, drug testing, and toxicity testing. Tests have shown that this method has a more accurate response then animal experiments do. Human cell-derived skin models, replicate key traits of normal human skin. It replaces the use of guinea pigs or mice, who would have been injected with a substance or had it applied to their shaved skin to determine an allergic response. Human volunteers use a method called ‘micro-dosing’ which can provide vital information of the safety of an experimental drug and how it is metabolized in human trials. Volunteers are given an extremely small one-time drug dose and techniques are used to monitor how the drug behaves in the body. Animals are taken against their will and tortured so that we can be happy.

The world doesn’t need another eyeliner, hand soap or food ingredients so badly that it should come at the expense of animals lives. There are other alternatives and people should stop testing on animals. More than $16 billion in U.S. taxpayer money is wasted annually on animal testing.  Other alternatives would be cheaper and more efficient. We support animal testing every day when we buy products that were tested on animals. Most of the products that we buy are unnecessary for our everyday lives. We just need to stop, research and look at the package, to see if you are helping something that many people want to stop.

Animals don’t deserve to be tested on. There are organizations like PETA, Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing, Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine, Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics and European Coalition to End Animal Experiments. PETA is about fighting against regulatory testing on animals. Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing is involved in the replacement of animals with in-vitro methods in the medical field. Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine promotes a vegan diet, preventative medicine, and alternatives to animal research. Coalition for Consumer’s Information on Cosmetics, let consumers know what products are not cruelty-free. European Coalition to End Animal Experiments, help eliminate all animal testing within the European Union. All these organizations believe that animals have rights like us. We need to stop supporting animal testing and start protecting the animals.

Bibliography:

Peta.org

Huffpost.com

Onegreenplanet.org

Wikipedia.org

https://www.cips.org/supply-management/news/2018/february/meps-call-for-worldwide-animal-testing-ban/

https://www.allure.com/story/california-cruelty-free-cosmetics-act-bill

http://blog.sermo.com/2018/03/05/doctors-approve-animal-testing/