The Cruelty of Animal Testing

The most cruel and useless form of “science.” Don’t worry, I am not going to post pictures of abused animals and what they look like after being tested on; I can’t stand to look at those images myself. But I will talk about why animal testing is bad and useless.
Myself, I sometimes demostrate against animal testing and I also help with spreading the word about this cruel form of “science.” I do so in both The Netherlands as in Belgium.

WHY IS ANIMAL TESTING BAD?

For a few simple reasons: Animals suffer from it immensely, plus with modern tecniques it is completely unnessecary. Animal testing is not just giving a mouse a pill and see what it does, it is so much more than that. They break their legs, burn them, cut them open while they’re still alive without any form of anesthesia, poison them, remove half their brains, spray stuff in their eyes and so on. And it’s not just mice and rats that have to suffer from the tests. Most people don’t know that cats, dogs, horses, pigs, guinnea pigs, rabbits and even MONKEYS are used for animal testing.

Besides the cruelty that comes along with it, there are more reasons why animal testing is a bad thing. For example: it is useless because we are not rabbits. An animal has a total different DNA than a human and therefore you can’t rely on the results. Bypass surgery is completely “safe” on humans, but they never succeeded in performing bypass surgery on dogs. Paracetamol is a very common and safe medicine to fight a headache, but it would kill a cat, goat or horse.

I understand that medicine needs to be tested somehow before it can be used on humans, but with modern tecniques it is useless to use animals for that. They now can sort of clone an organ and safely test on that. That way, no one gets hurt, plus eventually, it doesn’t cost as much as animal testing.

A lot of people believe that modern alternatives are much more expensive than animal testing because that’s what the pharmaceutical industry keeps telling them. It indeed costs quite an amount of money to switch from old tecniques to new ones, but eventually it will be worth it. It is a one time investment, while with animal testing, you have to keep paying for it. Animals need to be breeded, they need food, shelter and of course let’s not forget the transport costs. So despite what the industry claims, animal testing is more expensive than the use of modern tecniques!

And it’s not just the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industry that works with the cruel form of research. Especially in Belgium, but also in The Netherlands there a quite a lot of universities that force their students to test on animals. Most of the students give in, because they’re afraid that their grades will drop of they refuse to do the tests. SCHOOLS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DO SO! A student has every right to refuse testing on animals, but no one tells them that they have that right!

WHAT CAN YOU DO YOURSELF?

In the Netherlands it is completely legal to demonstrate against animal testing (when it is a valid demonstratio and all) but I don’t know how that is in other countries. There are a few simple measures you can take to make your life as “Animal test free” as possible.

-For people who use make up: Make sure it isn’t tested on animals. I could name a lot of Dutch brands that are animal test free, but of course, I don’t know how that is in other countries. Usually the following thing suits most situations: The cheaper the product, the smaller the chance it is tested on animals. All the big brands, Maybeline, L’oreal, Max Factor and so on test on animals. There are a few big brands that are testfree (Estee Lauder and Yves Rocher). And let’s face it, why pay 15 euro’s for a mascara that is just as good as the one of 5 euro’s?

- Send protestmails! Let the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industry know that you don’t agree with what they’re doing! Make sure to always be polite, but fierce in your battle against this cruelty.

- Inform people! Just like I am doing now, do a little research and write a blog about it. Post your opinion on your facebook or twitter account, so people can read about it. Spread the word about it! Animal testing is a hidden industry that many people know so little about. I think it is time to change that.

Stop Dierproeven is the website of the organisation that I am involved with. It is a Dutch website, from a Dutch/Belgium organisation. We are a friendly organisation that repulse any form of violence. Despite what you might have heard: We do not break into test labs and set animals on the loose, we do not place bombs under people’s cars (someone once accused me of that) and we never use violence in our demonstrations. We believe that doing things the official way without violence is the best way to achieve things.

And we have achieved quite a lot over the past few years that we exist. We closed a monkey breeding facility in Nepal, stopped the university of Groningen from using cats in their experiments, got over 50.000 signatures for a petition that we’re going to send to out government saying we want a restriction of the usage of Cats and Dogs in animal testing, we closed a test lab for cigarette related tests on animals and we prevented that a new animal test lab would be build.

I will stop with my preach now, I hope it opened your eyes and made you realize that Animal testing is wrong. Thank you for reading.