Imagine shopping for a product that you know was tested on animals. Would you still buy it? Besides politics, a national issue often discussed in the United States is animal testing -- the testing of new and potentially harmful products by businesses on animals before the product is made available to consumers. This long-practiced method of testing is also called animal experimentation or animal research. Despite the sugar-coated names, a hundred million animals, including mice, dogs, frogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters, and monkeys, experience some form of this horrific testing -- which can also be called animal torture.
Animal testing is disturbingly inhumane and cruel. In 2010, about 97,123 animals suffered excruciating pain from being tested with no anesthesia whatsoever. This included 48,015 hamsters, 33,652 guinea pigs, 5,996 rabbits, and 1,395 primates. Tests such as Draize eye testing featured rabbits having their eyelids clamped opened, preventing the product from being blinked out. In another procedure, the process of manufacturing the anti-wrinkling treatment Dysport involved horrific tests performed on mice. This testing involved powerful toxins injected into the mice, causing them to have severe distress and muscle paralysis. Later, the mice slowly suffocated to death. It gets even worse. Other tests include forcing substances down a rat’s throat using a feeding tube. They may experience diarrhea, convulsions, bleeding from the mouth, seizures, paralysis, or even death. These are only three out of the thousands of horribly cruel experiments performed on animals in the name of consumer safety and business profits.
Of course it’s obvious that animals are very different from human beings. Thus, they make poor test subjects. The crazy thing is that animal testing does not have to exist anymore! It’s 2017, and of course there are new, more humane, and far less despicable methods now. If the right amount of money is funded and recourses are made, animal testing can be stopped. Thankfully, with the help of advanced computer-modeling and studies with human volunteers, a microchip has been created that uses real tissue. This is also known as “organs-on-chips.” On the chip, there contains human cell growth that has the same function(s) as the organ system. It’s been shown to have the same human disease and drug response as in the animal experiments. This allows scientists and researchers to study diseases that might be contracted from new, untested products. Even though this breakthrough is benefiting companies that don't test on animals, it doesn't mean that animal testing has come to an end! Everyday products that you see in the store, such as Windex, Arm & Hammer, and ChapStick, are still tested on animals.
So what can you do to prevent animal testing? How can we not make this a national issue? Well, there is only so much the common everyday person can do. The least you can do is educate yourself. Everyone should be more aware about what products are tested on animals. They can also make choices with their purchasing power by choosing only products that are certified to be cruelty-free: products that do not conduct testing on animals. They can choose not to buy products like Head and Shoulders, Old Spice, and Vicks and instead replace those brands with humane products like Paul Mitchell and Burt's Bees. Buying cruelty-free can make a substantial difference not only for you as a consumer but for innocent animals as well.
by Emma G.