Animal Experimentation: The Animal Welfare Act

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The cognitive ability for animals to reason, feel “human” emotion, and recognize and acknowledge pain should deter their use in cruel experiments and lab tests, especially since plenty of alternative options are available for use. For one thing, these tests are inhumane, dangerous, and harmful to the animals involved. Secondly, approximately 94% of the tests conducted on animals are not approved as safe or eligible for human use. Finally, plenty of perfectly applicable alternatives to animal research are available for a low price and risk than what is used now.

The first and formost subject that appears in animal experimentation is that of morality and humanity. Many wonder why those who commit devastating acts of cruelty on animals for 'research’ are considered respected scientists and not discredited for abuse. Animals in experimentation are not protected under the Animal Welfare Act, and henceforth are not counted as ‘true’ animals; of the hundreds of millions of animals which are brutally burned, crippled, poisoned, or abused each year, only 10% are actually noted as being dead or injured throughout their life. Even those creatures who are under the protection of AWA (Animal Welfare Approved) programs are not required to be replaced by alternatives, and labs that use mice, rats, birds, reptiles, or amphibians are exempt from any minimal protections as well. In many places around the world, such as China, animal testing is mandatory on every product released to the public. How can this be morally correct when numerous studies have found that previously thought "human-unique" characteristics, like episodic memory, non-linguistic mathematical ability, and the mental capacity to navigate using landmarks, have be...

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...ane experiments should not fall to their innocent shoulders, but instead upon those accurate and cheaper alternatives that are so readily available.

Works Cited

"Animal Testing and Ethics." Animal Testing and Ethics. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Apr. 2014.

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Procon.org "Animal Testing ProCon.org" ProCon.org. 29 Jan. 2014. Web. 2 Apr. 2014.

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"Types of Animal Testing." -The American Anti-Vivisection Society (AAVS). N.p., n.d. Web. 7

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of_Animal_Testing.html#UOLbC8i9Kc0>.

"11 facts About Animal Testing." Do Something. N.p., n.p. Web. 2 Apr. 2014.

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