Cats in Animal Testing
"Latest figures show Animal Testing is up overall by 3.2% to 12.1 million in 2005. This includes 3,600 Cats. This is despite European Commission and member state's individual promises to reduce and replace the use of animals in experiments."This comes from an email circulated amongst a Yahoo Group. I am not sure if this relates to Europe or worldwide. Either way it's a large figure. Animal testing has to be fundamentally wrong.
I know it can be argued that for certain kinds of research it could be justified. Research into life saving drugs being an example. However, even for this kind of research it presupposes that we (as human animals) are more important and more valuable than other animals, which justifies killing other animals to save the lives of human animals. That just doesn't sound correct to me.
But it does sound correct to many people. The world is still pretty basic in its thinking. In 1000 years we will look back at 2007 and think that we were barbaric just as we do now we we look back 1000 years.
All animals are equal. All have a value and all should be respected in exactly the same way.
If we as humans want to prolong our lives through drugs that need to be tested lets do the tests on ourselves or in a purely scientific way.
If there is an argument at least that testing on animals might be justifiable under certain circumstances, if it is for the improvement of cosmetics it is frankly totally immoral and it makes me sick to think about it.
"CoverGirl is one of the largest U.S. brands to conduct animal testing but Procter & Gamble contends that they have discontinued animal testing with respect to about 80% of their products worldwide." (Wikipedia - this is not copyright material).
Shame on them, I say. Those of us in Europe should write to out MEPs in http://www.europarl.europa.eu. I know this takes time and it's a pain and we think it won't do any good. (I've just done this, its easy to do).
Here are two quotes from the great man that may encourage you:
In my humble opinion, non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.
Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
Mahatma Gandhi
These saying inspire me to do the right thing. What about the 3,600 cats that were used for testing purposes? Apparently Iams (the pet food manufacturer) and Hills test on cats and dogs and cause suffering to these animals. Read more about this here
We just don't think about animal testing. It's hidden away. We are too busy; too self concerned. We have to be to survive. We should though give back a bit if we can. We hold the lives of cats in our hands. We have an obligation to act responsibly.
Cats domesticated themselves some 9,500 years ago. We accepted that. We have a "social contract". This means an unwritten contract implied from actions that governs how we treat each other. We are in breach of that contract and we should be ashamed.
Photograph reproduced under CC copyright Daveybot (flickr)
Figures from an email from Tony on Yahoo Group Benagal L
Ghandi quote from All Great Quotes
Comments
All decent minded and thinking people hate animal testing.
It is just big business, the shabby and greedy who condone it.
For me it can never be justified under any circumstances even when it just may help humans.
Lets test on ourselves.
Michael
How do you think we have make-up?
and the pills that keep us alive?
Anyway who cares about animals.
Thanks for this helpful comment. What you say is enlightened.
I LOVE ANIMALS♥
we humans already do many torturous things to animals such as killing them for food, hunting them down for products, hunting them to put their heads onto walls and using them for entertainment. do we really need to cause more harm for animals?
doing all these things to them is just getting rid of all the animal species they make people happy, are a great comfort, when they stay with you for a long time you will feel like they are apart of your family and many other things.
Having the animals die these horrible ways is bad obviously and having people not care about it is just going to make more of them die and dissappear from the face of the earth and then what is going to happen? people should just stop now before more animals die and some species are already becoming extinct because of us like the dolphins.
Being allergic to a few animals doesn't make me want to get rid of them as i love them. i can't really think of any reason why poeple would want to get rid of them.
they help the enviroment survive like sharks, sharks help the ecological balance of the marine environment in that they eliminate the genetically weaker animals in a population. People have killed sharks by cutting their fins off for food and leave them in the water to die. what is the point of that?
if people think that animals are bad because they kill people well they wouldn't if you just let them be an get on with their own lives. we shoudln't interfere with nature.