How would you feel?

Imagine humans having to be stuck inside a small contraption with a feeding tube down their throat. Getting forced to drink bleach, while you were squirming, fighting the pain. After this testing/torture has been done, people take notes then proceed to throw the humans in a bin. Letting them die.

This is what over 100 rabbits got treated like according to an article by Jmae L.  Or imagine getting locked in a small cage for 30 hours with no food or water, surviving, then just having to do the same process over and over again until death. On top of starvation, getting injected with substances and drugs that can result in death. Also think if humans were intentionally paralysed just so scientists could study their body. After they cut open their skulls and placed rods in their brains they were killed.

These conditions and more is what over 170,000 rabbits have to suffer through every year. Animals getting treated unfairly and poisoned from unsafe products is not the answer to testing new products. Animal testing is unnecessary because there is just as effective alternatives that are much safer for testing products.

Number of animals that are getting abused in the U.S

Published by: Wikimedia

25 million innocent animals. 25 million animals every year are being abused by chemicals, product testing, and scientific experiments. 25 million animals are being abused every year in just the US. According the article Experiments on Animals: Overview, 100 million animals are being abused every year worldwide.

Number of Animals that are getting abused worldwide

According the article Experiments on Animals: Overview, 100 million animals are being abused every year on the globe.

Harms from the cruelty of animal testing

Image by: Wikimedia

Everyday, tons of harmless animals are having to suffer from animal testing. There is nothing they can do to protect themselves either, they are completely helpless without a voice of opinion. In the Animal Testing Horror: Scientists cut open kittens’ skulls and stuck electrodes in their BRAINS article, they are especially defenseless after some get no food or water, electric shocks, diseases, burning skin, brain damage or blinding. Just because the animals cannot talk, does not mean they should get treated the way some companies treat them. Not only do they have the pain of the products they receive, but the stress they are under is a lot to handle. This is why most animals that undergo animal testing do not survive. They are limited to a small living space, with little to no food. Also according to Jeremy Bentham, “Studies show that mice are capable of empathy and become even more stressed when witnessing other mice in distress.” Putting animals through this is very unhealthy for them. Many companies are now using animal free tested ingredients in their products. One big company who use animal testing free ingredients is Lush.

Facts about animal testing

• “92% of experimental drugs that are safe and effective in animals fail in human clinical trials because they are too dangerous or don’t work”
• “Several cosmetic tests commonly performed on mice, rats, rabbits, and guinea pigs result in: skin and eye irritation tests where chemicals are rubbed on shaved skin or dripped into the eyes without any pain relief.”
• “According to the Humane Society, registration of a single pesticide requires more than 50 experiments and the use of as many as 12,000 animals.”

Companies against animal testing

Lush is a cosmetic company who wants the best for their customers by providing animal tested free products. For over 30 years, they have been protesting against animal testing. They use different ways for testing their products like a 3-dimensional human skill models, and cell culture tests. All of these examples and many more, have been accepted by the government regulators of cosmetics. These methods also get much faster results than animal testing and cost about 25% less money to complete.

Urban Decay is also a cosmetic company that is helping ending animal testing. Urban Decay does not allow any of their products to have been tested on animals or any of the materials in their products. All ingredients used by them are 100% vegan or being converted to being 100% vegan.

Another company that does not use animal tested ingredients is Too Faced cosmetics company. They love animals and all their products have not been tested on animals.

Alternatives other than animal testing

Mary Ann Liebert says that, “New research shows that exposing a 3D human skin tissue model to extracts of medical device materials can detect the presence of sensitizers known to cause an allergic response on contact in some individuals.”

According to Science Direct “Cell and tissue culture methods are generally fast, cheap, reproducible and reduce the use of experimental animals. Good cell culture practice (GCCP) is an attempt to develop a common standard forin vitro methods. The implementation of the use of chemically defined media is part of the GCCP. This will decrease the dependence on animal serum, a supplement with an undefined and variable composition.”

These methods are a better and more effective way to test products. They us save time, money, and animals lives. Also they are more reliable than animal testing and give us more accurate results. This is why every company should start going animal cruelty free.

Animal testing is not okay and companies should not be allowed to use animals when they are just as good, if not better options. There is no point in hurting animals. If we can safely test different products on things other than animals, why should we be abusing them?

Featured image by: “Rabbit in Research for Animal Testing” by Understanding Animal Research/Flickr