ARAN Support World Lab Animal Week

limerick | animal rights | news report Saturday May 26, 2007 14:04 by Stephan Wymore - Animal Rights Action Network (ARAN) arancampaigns at eircom dot net ARAN Po Box 722, Kildare, Ireland

Volunteers including our youth members section of Animal Rights Action Network (ARAN) in Limerick city organized a truly attention grabbing event just recently to support World Lab Animal Week for April and Day of Action Against Procter & Gamble.

With a banner reading "Animals Are Not Ours To Experiment On ARAN" over 30 members peaceful protested the ongoing use of animals in testing and research. Consider the fact;-

The vivisection industry is made up of tens of thousands of individuals and entities who profit from the misery, suffering, and deaths of more than 115 million animals a year (exact numbers are hard to come by since mice, rats, and birds, who make up 80 to 90 percent of those animals used, are not covered by the Animal Welfare Act and therefore go uncounted).

The best way to understand how the vivisection industry works is to start with the animals themselves. First, there isn't a species of nonhuman animal experimenters won't exploit. Dogs, mice, rats, cats, fruit flies, zebra fish, macaques, baboons, chimpanzees, horses, pigs, chickens, bees, etc., are all up for grabs.

Animals bred and procured for use in experimentation can end up in any one of the thousands of laboratories (owned and operated by the makers of personal care and household products, colleges and universities, drug and chemical manufacturers that conduct animal experiments, here in Ireland it's the very same. Furthermore, there are as many different types of animal experiments as there are laboratories conducting them; animals are cloned, bred for their organs, addicted to drugs and alcohol, forced to inhale and/or ingest toxic substances, subjected to maternal deprivation experiments, purposely deafened with loud noises, made to suffer strokes, blinded, burned, stapled, given diabetes and cancer, and infected with horrifying viruses like Ebola. Most people are shocked to learn that such abuses, when "properly conducted" in the laboratory setting, are exempt from state anti-cruelty statutes.

In support of those who directly profit from animal experimentation (animal dealers and shippers, laboratory-equipment makers, experimenters and the institutions that they work for, etc.) is the vivisection lobby. Working hand in hand with its supporters in industry, academia, and government, the animal experimentation lobby enjoys a self-serving steady flow of taxpayer dollars while fighting animal protection legislation at every turn. They even successfully opposed giving protection to mice, rats, and birds, claiming it would be too costly and burdensome.

The best way to tackle the vivisection industry is to demand that your alma mater stop experimenting on animals, buy those products that are cruelty-free, give only to those charities that do not experiment on animals and demand the immediate validation and implementation of humane, more effective, and readily available non-animal tests.