Animal abuse happens all around the world. Different types of animals are abused and a diverse group of people abuse them. Hurting an animal is not right; some animals cannot even defend themselves from humans. Abuse can happen in urban and rural areas. Some surveys suggest the average person who abuses animals is male and under 30 and the average person who hoards animals is female and over 60. The most reported animals that are abused are dogs, cats, horses, and livestock. The most abused though was dogs and the most common type of dog was a pit-bull (“Animal”).
The majority of the United States animal abuse comes from animal testing. It is horrific seeing news footage of animals being killed. It is also horrific that some of your tax dollars could fund some experiments that kill animals here in the United States. The Environmental Protection Agency requires by law that if companies want to make a claim on their products it must be tested to ensure it is true. Things like shoving dogs into enclosed rooms where they cannot escape to test pesticides on them and testing fluoride on lab rats where they eventually killed are examples of this torture.
Agencies like the EPA, FDA, and the U. S. Department of Agriculture require types of animal testing. One of the most common animal abuse is the test where animals are force-fed lethal poising to see how much it takes to make them die. Some of these required test kill more than 2,000 animals every time they are conducted. These test have not all even been proved to predict human health effects (“U. S. Government”). I do not understand why we continue to test products on animals. Different methods have been made and more are in the works as an alternative to this testing and it does not make sense why we have not turned to these.
It is okay to want to ensure the safety of new products before they hit the market but to test these effects of the new product on animals should not be allowed. They go through pain just like us; they are not immune to it. It drives me crazy to think that some of my tax dollars could be going to this torture. I can understand that we need meat, eggs and things like that from animals to eat, but they can be killed in a humane way. The testing has no positive things to it but inflicting pain on animals, sometimes for extended periods of time. Our country is not the only one contributing to animal abuse.
Though many countries harm animals, a main one like the United States is China. Fur trade is the main way that China harms animals. This process is inhumane and I did not realize how bad it was until I looked further into it and the results were shocking. China has no penalties for these fur farms that produce the fur to trade. China supplies more than half of finished fur garments in the United States. Common animals on these farms are foxes, rabbits, dogs, and cats. They are put into wire cages and left to suffer through unbearable weather conditions like freezing rain or the scorching sun.
Some of these animals even go crazy in these cages and will chew off their own limb or throw their bodies against their cages. Animals will even go as crazy as to kill their own babies. Disease and injury in the animals are common. After being caged for various amounts of time, they are then skinned so their fur can be sold (“Chinese”). In PETA’s article, “The Chinese Fur Industry” they stated,” Undercover investigators from Swiss Animal Protection/ EAST International found that many animals are still alive and struggling desperately when workers flip them onto their backs or hang them up by their legs or tails to skin them” (“Chinese”).
Some can live five to ten minutes after being skinned. In these fur farms, people have found animals starved, dying, or even dead. Some of the animals in these farms still have collars on and were once someone’s pets that were stolen. It is also not rare to have these furs be mislabeled (“Chinese”). There needs to be something done about these fur farms. They use many horrible practices and let animals suffer for long periods of time. There should be penalties for fur farms. Animals should not be killed for their fur at all but if this process has to happen there should be guidelines and regulations.
This process is way too horrific as it is now. There is a much more humane way to kill an animals than the process that is used in the Chinese fur industry. Some humans can be diagnosed with being claustrophobic, so who is to say that animals might not be too? Squeezing these animals in cages and leaving them there for a long time is making them crazy. These poor animals can physically not take it. No animal should be skinned while still alive and even have to suffer through those final minutes they could live after the process.
If anything like that ever happened to a human, then everyone would think the person who skinned the other person was a complete psycho because honestly what kind of human would do that to another human. These two forms of abuse I have just discussed should not be performed when there are alternatives. Why would humans want to keep up these inhumane practices when they could chose a different option? Animal experimentation requires high amounts of manpower, time, and cost. The three R’s are a strategy that is being applied to experimenting on animals.
These three R’s are reduction, refinement, and replacement of laboratory animals (Doke). In the journal article, “Alternatives to animal testing: A review,” it states, This approach motivates the use of minimum number of animals i. e. ‘reduction’ in the total number of animals used in an experiment. The use of animals must be planned and “refined carefully in such a way that pain and distress caused during the experiment should be minimized. Moreover, if possible higher animals should be ‘replaced with alternative methodologies and lower organisms (Ranganatha and Kuppast, 2012; Zurlo et al. 1996). Animal replacement is defined as, ‘any scientific method employing non-sentient material which may replace use of conscious living vertebrates in animal experimentation’ (Doke). By following these three R’s, this could be a big step for all animals and their protection. This view of an alternative has been around for a while. Any place using animals to test products should take these R’s into consideration for the betterment of the lives of animals.
While the three R’s could definitely help, there are also other methods that avoid using animals in experimentation at all. e methods are more time efficient, use less man power, and do not cost as much. One alternative could be computer models. Computers can be used to design new medicines, produce simulations of experiments, vivo experimentation, and to predict biological activity of a drug. Computer models are faster and less expensive then animal experimentation. A study done by Dewhurst in 1994 showed that when comparing the effectiveness of a computer model to a traditional lab setting that the students in the computer model had a better pr blem solving attitude and the cost was much less (Doke).
These computer models can be used to predict and resolve many things and replace the use of animals while being more cost efficient. By adding computer models to experiments, it could drastically decrease the number of animals used for testing and the cost behind them. Another alternative is in vitro cell and tissue cultures. These method gets cells from tissues like the liver, kidney, brain, skin and many others and the cells collected can grow outside the body for a few days or up to a year in laboratory experiments. This alternative is also easy to follow and takes up less time and money.
Almost all cosmetics, drugs and chemicals can be tested using this method. This alternative can test drugs technically on animals but since the cells are outside of the body the animals feel no harm (Doke). This alternative can technically test drugs on animal cells but since the cells are outside of the body the animals feel no harm. By using this method, there could be another large decline in animal deaths and the number of animals that are tested on Alternative methods of experimentation will help animals but another thing that could help would be better laws and punishment for animal abusers.
There are 50 states in the United States that have felony provisions for animal cruelty. Though 50 states have laws, some of them only allow felony charges if the abuser has a previous animal cruelty convictions. There are 43 states with felony provisions for a first time offense. There are six states that has felony convictions for second time offences and the last state, Idaho, has felony convictions for third time offences (“Animals”). Laws are a good things to have to punish animal abusers, even though as we can see in the world today, laws do not always stop people from committing a crime.
And just like other crimes committed, animal cruelty acts are only reported and stopped a fraction of the time that they happen. It is important to get the laws to be the same across the United States so it sets our whole country at an equal level of expectancy on how to treat animals. While the United States has punishment for animal cruelty, China on the other hand has a different culture and norms. Their country does not always feel the same way about things that the United States do. Therefor they both have different laws. China has recently proposed a new animal protection law.
This law protects animals from deliberate cruelty and examines the motivations that have persuaded china to revise and new law like this. The law reflects the requirements of international animal welfare standards and the desire of its citizens to protect these animals. This law protects wild, economic, pet, laboratory, and entertainment animals from cruelty and videos and or pictures of cruelty. The laws in China now provide limited protection. This draft law if passed will be a major step in stopping animal abuse in China (Whitfort).
The abuse animals go through is enough of a reason to be ighting for them and trying to stop animal cruelty. But, some people do not know that there may be a deeper connection between animal abuse and other problems. There have been many studies done that suggest there is a link between animal abuse and human abuse. Ignoring the fact that people are abusing animals increases the risk of promoting violence and not responding to psychological problems. Studies have shown that animal cruelty can distort empathy and be linked to things like interpersonal violence, bullying, juvenile delinquency, adult violent crimes, and other nonviolent offenses. Animal cruelty an also be a sign of family violence.
Ending the abuse of animals is an important part in declining amounts of violence. Many studies have been conducted and almost all of them have shown that a person who harms animals or watches them be harmed has a greater chance of being more violent and inflicting further pain (Flynn). It is amazing to see this connection between animal abuse and further violence. If we see that the connection is this strong, then why are we hesitating to set harsh laws to punish animal abusers? By doing this, the amount of overall violence could decrease and be beneficial for both humans and animals.