- Statistics show that every 3 minutes an animal dies inside Huntingdon totalling 500 innocent lives everyday.
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Huntingdon Life Sciences is one of Europe’s biggest testers on animals and they kill approximately 75,000 animals each year with 87% of these animals being rodents.
This pie chart shows the different percentages of animals which are tested on during animal testing. Looking at this pie chart, it shows that 53% of mice were used for animal testing also, mice was the most popular animal that test did take place on.
However, this pie chart shows the different figures of animal abuse classification in the US which had been graphed on 24 May 2009 with a total number of 13112 animals which had been abused. The highest rated way animals had been abused was neglecting and abandoning which had 4233 animals and as a percentage it was 32.3%. On the other hand, the least rated way in which animals had been abused by was burning it had 78 animals which was equivalent to 0.6%.
This graph is showing peta’s (people for the ethical treatment of people) view on animal abuse which was done in 2009 and it shows that all the types of abuse that were mentioned were rated in peta’s view as hellish.
Arguments for animal testing
- Animal testing has helped to develop vaccines against disease such as TB, rubella, mumps, measles, polio and rabies.
- Operations on animals have helped to develop organ transplant and open-heart surgery techniques.
- Antibiotics, insulin, cancer treatments and HIV drugs rely on animal tests.
- Scientists say there are no differences in lab animals and humans that cannot be factored into tests.
- Human life has greater value than animal life.
- Few animals feel any pain as they are killed before they have the chance to suffer.
- Millions of animals are killed for food every year; medical research is more worthy death.
- Legislation protects all lab animals from cruelty or mistreatment.
- There are millions of animals in the world and animal testing only tests on a fraction of that number which is done humanely.
- Animals may have allergic reactions to some products which could lead them into having infections, rashes etc.
- Animals are easily bred and maintained safely in controlled labs.
Arguments against animal testing
- There are alternatives to animal testing which are successful such as test tube studies on human tissue cultures and computer models.
- The stress that animals endure in labs and the tremendous stress when they are locked up can affect experiments, making the results meaningless.
- Animals have as much right to life as human beings.
- Deaths through research are unnecessary and are morally no different from murder.
- Strict controls have not prevented researchers from abusing animals.
- Animals are not always given anaesthetic which means they go through a lot of pain when they don’t have anaesthetic.
- An animal’s response to a drug can be different to a human’s.
- Computer models are other types of methods of testing are still not advanced enough so animal testing must continue.
- Animal testing is cruel because animals have to go through a lot of stress and which can lead into their death.
- Animal testing should not be carried out for non-essential products such as shampoo, cosmetics, soaps and cleaning products.
Huntingdon Life Sciences;
Huntingdon life sciences (HLS) are an example of an organisation which is not against animal testing and is till continuing to test on animals and treat the animals inappropriately. It is the largest contract testing laboratory in Europe. 70,000 animals are on sites that are destined to suffer and die in cruel useless experiments.
HLS carry out experiments which involve poisoning animals with household products, pesticides, additives, genetically modified organisms etc.
It is the most uncovered laboratory in the world. In the past few years, HLS have been broken into and exposed at least 7 times for revolting animal cruelty and rule breaking. Each time they have broken into it, evidence of horrific animal abuse and staff incompetence has been uncovered, which includes workers punching beagle puppies in the face.
The Animal Defenders International who was carrying out an investigation throughout Europe into the breeding, transportation and experimental procedures on primates found out about HLS. They investigated at HLS where they proceeded to uncover the dishonourable laboratory by working undercover in the experimental monkey unit. It was exposed in 2008 for keeping animals in small, barren metal sharp cages which can injure them, rough handling of animals, monkeys biting off their own toes with boredom and stress, animals stressed that they start behaving randomly and much more.
Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC);
SHAC is an example of a campaign who is trying to stop animal testing and get closures of organisations which are treating animals cruelly and not accordingly to the law. SHAC is an international campaign and the first to have groups in Germany, France, Holland, UK and other countries which have decided to all unite to target HLS and the companies that support them globally. SHAC has been made up of compassionate people starting from children up to pensioners and are all trying to do as much as they can to get Huntingdon Life Sciences closed down.
Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty was a campaign which was set up at the end of 1999 by a group of protestors who had successfully closed lab animal breeders down. By closing down these, it meant that these types of campaigns were closed down and hundreds of animals were being safely rehomed instead of the torture in the laboratories.
In 1996 SHAC started a campaign against Consort kennels which was near Hertford. Over 8 hundred beagles were kept at the kennels waiting to be sold to labs such as Huntingdon Life Sciences.
This campaign was strong and involved daily and national demonstrations and regular night vigils. Throughout this campaign, 3 rescue operations took place which was seeing 26 beagles go free to safe homes. Just after 10 months of campaigning, they couldn’t take more pressure and the kennels eventually closed in July 1997. Following the closure, 200 beagles were successfully rehomed.
There has also been a global campaign which has been launched against Europe’s largest animal testing facility HLS. 2 million members of the public have signed to appeal against HLS and have it closed. HLS broke the law over 520 times during a study involving wild caught primates and the government have failed to close HLS so it’s now up to the public to get Huntingdon Life Sciences closed down.
Many companies that are work with HLS are unaware of their history of animal cruelty because they have been given falsified data and negligence so by the SHAC writing letters emails and etc it will bring the issue to their attention.
http://www.shac.net/SHAC/shac_intro.html
British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV)
The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection is in London is another organisation which is against animal testing and are trying to ban animal testing. The BUAV aims to have all animal experimentation stopped. They take part in undercover investigations in laboratories and they also focus on education and research. The BUAV is a strong supporter of alternatives to animal testing and is usually respected for their approaches.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)
People for the ethical treatment of animals are also against animal testing and are trying there best to get as many members as they can who are against animal testing. PETA is an animal rights group which believe that animals are not ours to use for food, clothing, experimentation or entertainment. In 1980, PETA had only a handful of volunteers and since then it has become an international organization with more than 1,800,000 members and supporters. PETA is based in the United States but I also has offices in Canada, France, Spain and several other countries. It is committed to help activist’s protester around the world organize to protect animal rights.
PETA and there members around the world educate policymakers and the public about cruelty to animals and promote understanding of the right of all animals to be treated with respect. They work through public education, protest campaigns, animal’s rescues and others.
PETA appreciates animals as pets and companions and the campaigns which they run, many of them have been strongly criticised for their aggressive approaches through advertisements and protests.
My opinion;
In my opinion I think that animal testing is wrong for many reasons. As already mentioned, animals have as much right to life as we do and they haven’t done anything to human beings so why should they have to suffer. There are alternatives to animal testing such as human tissue cultures, computer model and test tube studies. I know that these methods have not been developed enough to be able to be tested out through these methods but I think that people should be spending time on developing these alternative methods further so animal testing can be stopped and other methods are used which don’t involve the animals and the pain and stress that the animals are going through today. Also, another method of testing products could be the use of volunteers or prisoners who are sentenced to be hung / killed they should be tested upon as they are going to die anyway and they should test on animals as well but this way there will be some reduction on the amount of animals that are being tested on. When there is non-animal methods over animal methods the non-animal methods should be used to reach the same aim.
Most of the animals that are tested on die either from the testing itself or from the shock that they receive which I think is not right because this is showing a sign of murder which is incorrect.
Whenever animals are to be tested on, I think they should give the animals anaesthetics so they don’t feel as much pain as they would if they didn’t have anaesthetic which would reduce the suffering they have to go through and also there should be improvement in animal welfare for the animals that are still used today.
I think that all the above should be done because everyday animals are being tested upon and killed during the testing so if they are going to die, they should receive a less painful death. The scientific information that I have does give evidence about my opinion that animal testing is wrong. This is shown through the last two graphs one of which is a pie chart about the way animal abuse takes place in the United States and another is Peta’s view on the types of abuse done to animals and how bad the abuse is in their opinion.
Conclusion;
In conclusion having looked at the for and against sides of animal testing, charts and statistics I have come to a conclusion that animal testing is wrong and it should be banned however, I don’t think it should be banned until they have found more than just one alternatives and made sure that they are fully developed and will work out so when they stop animal testing they shouldn’t have to sell products to human beings without being tested properly. There are many reasons why I still do think that animal testing should be banned and one of the reasons is that the pain the animals go through in labs and the stress that they receive when they are locked up is tremendous.
I also do think that unnecessary animal experimenting should not take place especially when animals are tested upon for non-essential products such as shampoo, cosmetics and others. I think that there should be another method which should be developed for testing non-essential products and not making the animals go through stress and pain for products which aren’t for example, there should be animal testing taking place for medicines rather than cosmetics and shampoo. If animals are going to be tested on then the testing outcome should be beneficial for human beings and worthwhile for the animals for going through all the pain and stress for something that was useful.
I have used this website to get relevant information for my case study project because it’s a website that I think is not biased because teachers recommend students to go on this website for revision for exams and GCSE’s.
I have included this website in my case study because it has information which is useful for my case study and I have searched on other websites and I have found the same response as this one, but this website contained more information about animal testing then some others.
From this website I only used statistics and also some information about animal testing which was necessary when I was writing up my scientific information because looking at the statistics and comparing them with other ones from different websites they seemed realistic to me so I decided to take them from this website.
This website was helpful for me when I was also doing my scientific information because it contained a pie chart which I have copied into my work which shows the animal which is mostly used for animal testing. I used this website because it seemed like a scientific website because it contained a lot of information about animal testing and other things such as genetically modified organisms.