Be good to animals

By Amber Fagan

Animal testing is still widely accepted for medical and scientific advancement, but many members of the green revolution are starting to speak out against animal cruelty as an environmental cause.

Some companies, including Aubrey Organics and L’Occitane, have stopped animal testing altogether to save the often cruel and painful procedures that lab animals often have to endure.

According to a animal testing report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, animals of all kinds—birds, dogs, fish, guinea pigs, mice, rabbits, rats and even monkeys—are put through severe pain.

“[They] are forced to swallow or inhale massive doses of a test substance, which can cause severe abdominal pain, paralysis, swelling and ulceration of the skin and/or eyes, convulsions and seizures and bleeding from the nose, mouth and genitals before they are poisoned to death or killed by the experimenter,” the report said.

PETA, an animal protection agency, has claimed that animal testing has not played a key role in medical and scientific advancements.

“Many of the most important advances in the field of health care can be attributed to human studies, which have led to major medical breakthroughs, such as the development of anesthesia, the stethoscope, morphine, radium, penicillin, artificial respiration, x-rays, antiseptics, and CAT, MRI, and PET scans,” WHERE DOES IT SAY THIS?

According to PETA, many countries require animal testing before of pesticides, industrial chemicals, drugs and vaccines, genetically manipulated foods and some consumer products can be imported into the country. Some regulations require upwards of 50 animal toxicity studies.

But recently, alternatives to animal testing have been introduced and include the following:

• EPISKIN™ and EpiDerm™, models made up of human skin cell cultures which have been validated and accepted internationally as complete replacements for rabbit skin-corrosion studies
• The cell-based “3T3 neutral red uptake phototoxicity test,” that has become a commonly accepted substitute to the use of guinea pigs and mice to determine sunlight-induced skin irritation
• The “embryonic stem cell test for embryotoxicity,” which uses cells from mice (while not harming the actual mice) to detect chemicals that have the potential to cause the malformation of developing embryos
• The use of human skin tissue samples to calculate the rate at which chemicals are absorbed through the skin

Go green and make sure that your products don’t test on animals and visit StopAnimalTests.com to learn more about animal testing and its alternatives.