Written by PETA
This may be what you're used to thinking of as an anti-viv poster:
But nowadays, you're just as likely to see this as an anti-viv poster:
That's because PETA has a squadron of scientists who meet with government regulators, serve on expert working groups, put pressure on international corporations, publish in scientific journals, and make presentations at international scientific conferences like the one that took place in August in Montréal.
The World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences is the premier international conference on alternatives to animal testing. (Yes, we know that the "and" in the title should be "to" and have mentioned that to the organizers.) Even though animal experimenters attend the conference and peddle their wares and displays touting cruel experiments like force-feeding animals Jerusalem artichokes (seriously), there is also a lot of excellent information presented on non-animal testing methods and strategies.
Five PETA scientists presented displays and gave talks at last week's conference about ways to avoid using animals in endocrine testing, skin testing, and other tests. Our presentation on vaccine testing evidenced how PETA has succeeded in using a variety of pressure points to save thousands of animals from being used in cruel vaccine testing, including convincing the U.S. government to replace the use of pigs in painful erysipelas vaccine tests. Another PETA scientist addressed attendees regarding new non-animal technologies that can replace the use of mice in antibody production work.
With close to 1,000 participants from more than 50 countries at the conference, PETA's scientists were encouraged to note how many companies and laboratories represented at the Congress are actively working on technology and testing methods that can reduce or replace the use of animals. Not only are these methods 100 percent humane, they are also less expensive, more effective, and faster than animal tests.
Last Labor Day weekend, Buddy and Copper were among the dogs sitting in barren, filthy cages at animal testing hellhole Professional Laboratory and Research Services, Inc. (PLRS). But this Labor Day weekend, the two friends are rolling in the grass, playing with other dogs, and being loved and petted at Kindness Ranch.
Courtesy Emile Hallez Williams
Kindness Ranch helps animals rescued from laboratories to heal from the torture that they've endured and finds them permanent homes. When recent visitor and PETA pal Dan Hanley met Buddy and Copper, he was inspired to write about them on his website, calling them "complete loves." Even after everything humans have put them through, these two dogs still have lots of love to give.
A PETA undercover investigation of PLRS found that dogs there spent years in cages, being force-fed experimental compounds and infested with worms. Besides the torment of the experiments themselves, laboratory workers screamed and cursed at the dogs, used pressure hoses to spray them with water and harsh chemicals, and dragged them when they would not walk. After PETA released the evidence from the investigation, PLRS shut its doors and surrendered Buddy, Copper, and nearly 250 other animals. Almost a year later, Buddy and Copper are learning to trust. Hanley said that Buddy wiggled right onto his lap, anxious for the love that he was denied for so long. Copper is a bit more reserved, and sudden movements and loud noises frighten him. He slowly makes his way toward new people, still scared but also longing for a kind word or gentle touch. After life in a cage, both dogs love to go for walks and feel soft grass beneath their paws.
By next Labor Day, Buddy's and Copper's lives will probably have changed again. By that time, they will both have homes and families to call their own.
Written by Michelle Sherrow
Chimpanzees used in laboratory experiments have been a hot topic this summer, from the film Rise of the Planet of the Apes to the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine hearings on the use of chimpanzees for experimentation. Now, Unsaid, a new novel by Neil Abramson, movingly explores the ways in which animals—including a chimpanzee, Cindy, who communicates with sign language—impact the lives of the humans who care for and about them.
The novel takes us on the journey of David Colden, an attorney who is mourning his wife's death while defending sign-language researcher Dr. Cassidy, who has raised Cindy from infancy and who will do anything—including breaking the law—to prevent the young chimpanzee from being sent to a laboratory.
I wanted to cheer when Colden told the court: "There was a crime committed here—but it wasn't by Dr. Cassidy. The crime is by those who would torture a thinking, feeling, caring, intelligent creature and expect others to sit idle amid the torrent of blood and screams."
In some ways, Dr. Cassidy's story mirrors the real life work of Dr. Roger Fouts, who has spent decades teaching sign language to chimpanzees. Because he doesn't "own" all the apes he works with, some of them have been sold to laboratories over the years, including Booee, whom Fouts, trailed by a 20/20 film crew, visited in a laboratory years later with heartbreaking results. The ensuing public outcry resulted in Booee being sent to a sanctuary.
Unsaid: A Novel is available from Amazon.
Victory: As a result of PETA's campaign, the Army announced that it is ending its cruel use of monkeys in chemical attack training exercises and will instead use advanced human simulators!
Next week, the U.S. Army plans to start poisoning African vervet monkeys with massive chemical overdoses as part of a crude and cruel "show and tell" training exercise at Maryland's Aberdeen Proving Ground in order to demonstrate the effects of a nerve-agent attack. The overdoses will cause the monkeys to suffer from uncontrollable twitching, seizures, and vomiting, and some will even stop breathing. In a laboratory worksheet that PETA obtained from Aberdeen, one trainee compared a monkey's violent reaction during the exercise to "a chiwawa [sic] sh*tting razor blades."
Aberdeen is set to receive an additional shipment of 20 vervet monkeys from overseas―a frightening journey for them―in late September, and they could well be subjected to these cruel exercises too.
This is one more example of shortchanging our military and pointlessly abusing animals for some elementary exercise that already exists on film! Other military and civilian training programs around the world are using sophisticated human patient simulators that can be programmed to mimic the human response to a nerve-agent attack, which is very different from a vervet monkey's response. And not only are the Army's monkey laboratories cruel and inefficient, they violate Department of Defense policies that prohibit the harming of primates in training exercises and require that non-animal training methods be used when available.
Please, help stop this by contacting Major General Nick Justice, the commanding general of Aberdeen, right now and asking him to live up to his name and save monkeys from this cruelty by switching this very second to modern, effective medical training methods.
A U.S. company that breeds dogs for sale to laboratories has lost its first round in an effort to expand its operations in the U.K.
B&K Universal in Yorkshire is owned by New York–based Marshall Farms, which has been repeatedly cited for federal Animal Welfare Act violations. B&K applied for planning permission to open a new facility where dogs would be confined to indoor kennels. The females would be repeatedly impregnated, and their puppies would be sold to laboratories for use in painful toxicity tests and other experiments, perhaps similar to those conducted at Professional Laboratory and Research Services, which PETA investigated last year.
Following a massive outpouring of opposition—including more than 2,000 letters from PETA U.K. supporters—the local council rejected B&K's application. Now, B&K is attempting to bypass opposition by appealing to the Planning Inspectorate, a national body.
PETA U.K. is rallying supporters and will hold an eye-catching demonstration at the Inspectorate's office. Please help dry up the demand for animal-tested products by telling everyone you know to support only cruelty-free companies.
Watching my cherished grandmother suffer through breast-cancer surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, then pass away, was the hardest thing that I have ever gone through. I felt so helpless—then I became determined to help find a cure. For me, that meant participating in walks and other fundraisers for breast-cancer charities that are actually helping us get closer to a cure by funding cutting-edge, effective, non-animal research.
After decades and billions of dollars spent tormenting and killing dogs, cats, monkeys, rabbits, mice, rats, and other animals, we still have no cure for breast cancer. Experiments on animals are unreliable because of the significant genetic, cellular, and physiological differences between species. Former National Cancer Institute Director Dr. Richard Klausner has stated, "The history of cancer research has been the history of curing cancer in the mouse. We have cured mice of cancer for decades, and it simply didn't work in humans."
While every 12 minutes in America, another woman dies from breast cancer, organizations such as the Susan G. Komen Foundation waste money on cruel, archaic animal experiments, and people are starting to say "Enough." The Seattle Veg Singles group was set to do a charity walk for Komen, but when the group learned that the charity funds experiments on animals, it immediately canceled its plans.
If you want to help raise money for breast cancer research, do women a favor by supporting one of the many charities that don't fund experiments on animals, including the American Breast Cancer Foundation, the Keep A Breast Foundation and the Breast Cancer Fund. And let the Susan G. Komen Foundation know that it won't be getting a dime from you until it stops funding animal experiments.
We're spitting mad at people who have been lashing out at animals, but we've saved up some wet, sloppy puppy-dog kisses for those whose compassion is the cat's pajamas.
For up-to-the-minute info on what PETA is doing, follow us on Twitter.
In an essay posted today on The Huffington Post, PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk talks about the progress being made in behalf of chimpanzees in laboratories and posits that great apes appear to have at long last reached a turning point with the introduction of the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act, which would phase out all invasive experiments on great apes and mandate the retirement to sanctuaries of all 500 chimpanzees currently held in federally funded laboratories.
"These chimpanzees, hundreds of them, have been alone all those decades: no mate, no child, no friend to comfort them, to help them get through the pain of whatever experiment they are being subjected to," writes Ingrid. "Being possessed of the ability to anticipate, they could only dread the next ordeal―a lung biopsy, perhaps, an injection, an infection―who knows? They don't."
Ingrid notes how far chimpanzees have come since she attended a symposium on alternatives to animal experiments 30 years ago at which a famous chimpanzee experimenter, Dr. Alfred Prince, was labeled a turncoat by many of his colleagues for proposing a "Chimpanzee Bill of Rights" that proposed the then-radical idea that chimpanzees should be treated as more than test tubes with opposable thumbs.
"After Dr. Prince spoke, there was much mumbling and foot-shuffling in the auditorium," writes Ingrid. "Then, a red-faced scientist stood up and screamed―not spoke but screamed―that any talk of affording chimpanzees rights was nonsense. He was beside himself with rage as he accused anyone who cared about animals as using 'solely emotional arguments.' I stood up to say that there's nothing wrong (in fact there's often everything right) with being moved by the plight of others―for those who can't empathize include sociopaths―but I really didn't need to open my mouth. The irony of his fiercely emotional outburst said it all. I drove home thinking, 'It's started.' But look how long the journey has taken!"
"Animal liberation was once a wonderful dream, but now, starting with the chimpanzees, it is beginning to happen. Let's wish the other animals the best in winning their future freedom, too, and celebrate the eventual end of our role as their masters."
To read Ingrid’s essay in its entirety, visit HuffingtonPost.com.
Written by Alisa Mullins
Dogs are disappearing from people's yards and cars, and dognappers are likely to blame. Reports of abductions are up a whopping 32 percent from last year. People sometimes kidnap animals in order to collect reward money or, worse, to use them in dogfights, to sell them to laboratories for experiments, or even to torture and kill them for pleasure or in rituals. We've seen and heard it all.
We can make sure dognappers never have a chance to get their hands on our dogs and cats by never letting them out of our sight when they are outdoors, even for a minute. This will also ensure that they're safe from other hazards that lurk outdoors, such as traffic, poison, cruel people, aggressive animals, and more.
It's also critical to make sure that your animal companions can be identified easily, in case they should become lost. Have them microchipped and ensure that they wear collars with up-to-date identification tags bearing your cell phone number, just in case.
Written by Lindsay Pollard-Post
After thousands of e-mails, hundreds of phone calls, and a PETA "monkey" paying a visit to China Southern Airlines' L.A. office, the airline—which is the largest in China—has made the compassionate decision to cancel its plans to ship 80 monkeys from China to the U.S., where they were going to end up in the hands of Shin Nippon Biomedical Laboratories (SNBL) and Harlan Laboratories and be tormented in cruel experiments.
RedCoat/CC BY-SA 2.5
Now, we're urging China Southern Airlines officials to join with many other major airlines, including Delta, American, United, British Airways, and Virgin Atlantic, and refuse to transport primates to laboratories ever again. You can also write to them here. We'll keep you posted!
If you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to an animal, please click here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
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