Easy+Breezy+Beautiful+Murderers

Animal testing costs the American public over $136 billion dollars annually. That means that it costs the average American home three hundred dollars a year to fund animal torture. Meanwhile America’s economy is already suffering brutally .Ninety percent of animal test results are discarded. Meaning that these animals are tortured and that it is all for nothing. So why is the animal testing necessary?

Some may say that human life has greater importance than animal life and that animals are killed every year for food anyway. But the deaths in research are morally no different from cold-blooded murder. In 2003, the European Union passed a ban on the use of animals in cosmetics testing. Starting in 2009, and a complete sales ban effective in 2013. To be able to strap a pet’s head down and give high impact blows to the head just for researching head trauma is revolting. Even the drugs that pass the animal tests end up harming humans 61% of the time.

Cover Girl is not so easy, breezy, and beautiful when in the “Draize test”; caustic substances are placed in the eyes of conscious rabbits to evaluate damage to sensitive eye tissues. This is extremely painful for the rabbits, who often scream when the substances are applied and sometimes break their necks or backs trying to escape the restraints. Cosmetic companies perform more than half of all animal tests.

Not only is animal testing inhumane it is also inaccurate. Each species reacts different to different products. And there are alternatives. Tests have been developed that are more reliable and less expensive. There are some companies that avoid testing altogether and just use non-toxic all natural products. They make use of cell and skin tissue cultures, corneas from eye banks, and sophisticated computer and mathematical models. These companies get by just fine without agonizing animals. It is not required to perform animal testing of cosmetics. But most beauty products do the testing still. I guess many excuses can be made. They want to evade liability if there is a law suit. What about these liable pets?

What is not argued is that humans and animals are different in many ways psychologically. Test results can be affected by the age and sex of the animals tested their housing and nutritional conditions and how the compound is administered. Many drugs approved for human use based on animal studies have had to be taken off the market at a later date because of side effects not revealed in animal studies. More than 100,000 people have been hospitalized and later died from toxic reactions to medications in 1994 that were not predicted by animal tests. You can't even get an accurate count on the number of animals killed every year because experimenters and the government have decided that mice and rats and certain other animals don't even have to be counted.

There are few things that you can do to help. You can refuse to contribute to charities such as Environmental Defense, the World Wildlife Fund, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, which push for increased animal testing by the Environmental Protection Agency. Also if you have ever witnessed animal testing please report it. Other things include taking an extra look at labels and go for one that does not animal test. As consumers we are partly responsible so its time to do what we can to help.