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- Over 100 million animals are burned, crippled, poisoned and abused in U.S. labs every year.
- 92 percent of experimental drugs that are safe and effective in animals fail in human clinical trials because they are too dangerous or don’t work.
- Labs that use mice, rats, birds, reptiles and amphibians are exempted from the minimal protections under the Animal Welfare Act (AWA).
- Up to 90 percent of animals used in U.S. labs aren’t counted in the official statistics of animals tested.
- It’s mandatory for all products to be tested on animals in China. Meanwhile, the European Union issued a ban on the sale of new cosmetics that are tested on animals.
- Even animals that are protected under the AWA can be abused and tortured. And the law doesn’t require the use of valid alternatives to animals, even if they are available.
- 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.
- Several cosmetic tests commonly performed on mice, rats, rabbits, and guinea pigs include:
- skin and eye irritation tests where chemicals are rubbed on shaved skin or dripped into the eyes without any pain relief.
- repeated force-feeding studies that last weeks or months, to look for signs of general illness or specific health hazards.
- widely condemned “lethal dose” tests, where animals are forced to swallow large amounts of a test chemical to determine what dose causes death.
- In tests of potential carcinogens, subjects are given a substance every day for two years. Others tests involve killing pregnant animals and testing their fetuses.
- The real life applications for some of the tested substances are as trivial as an “improved” laundry detergent, new eye shadow, or copycat drug to replace a profitable pharmaceutical whose patent expired.
- “Alternative” tests are those that achieve one or more of the “three R’s:”
- replaces a procedure that uses animals with a procedure that doesn’t use animals
- reduces the number of animals used in a procedure
- refines a procedure to alleviate or minimize potential animal pain
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Sources: PETA, Humane Society, ASPCA , Reuters, PETA.org, Humane Society of the United States,
