There are still many companies around the world that test on animals. The companies do this by conducting experiments on live animals such as mice, rabbits and guinea pigs to gauge the safety and the potential effects of their products.
Companies should not test chemicals or cosmetics of any kind on animals.
When a businesses tests on animals, they expose them to different substances to determine whether or not they are safe for humans. This practice is not ethical at all. Often times these chemicals that are put onto their skin causes pain and suffering, and it does not end there, in addition to putting products on animals’ skin, these companies also inject them and force them to swallow products just to see if they are harmful or not. So, these animals have to go through their life in pain, and often die quickly. Some of the products that are commonly tested on animals are pesticides, cosmetic ingredients, pharmaceuticals, industrial chemicals, and many more.
Additionally, testing on animals does not accurately depict what will happen when the product is used on humans since animals have different biological systems and often respond differently to chemicals and drugs compared to humans. Therefore, there is a high chance that there will be side effects on humans that did not show up on animals and vice vera. Animals might react to something that humans do not, leading companies to change chemical properties of a product that had not needed to change. The reaction also depends on the type of animal used, so it can be concluded that it is neither ethical nor logical to test on animals.
Also, animal testing is time consuming and extremely expensive. For example, it can take about a decade and $3,000,000 to complete all the studies that are needed on the animals just to release one pesticide. So even though all of this money and time is spent, and these animals are tortured, the company still does not get the best results.
Some people may argue that animal testing is practical and needed because there is no other way to test a product’s safety before it is released to the public, but this is untrue. Labs can use cells and tissues derived from human donors to test effects of any substance. As well as 3-D tissue cultures and many more. These methods are more accurate and are not harming any animals.
Although there are laws in place to protect animals, like the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), these laws only ensure proper treatment of animals, the fact that companies considered alternate tastings, and animals having pain relief administered. However, they only ensure these protections for certain animals, when all animals should be protected be protected at the very least, but the best thing would be to outlaw all testing on animals in the United States, and maybe other countries would begin to follow suit, too.
Since there are so many alternate ways to test chemicals, companies around the world should ensure that their policies on testing their products do not include animals.
