Life for animals in laboratories is filled with days, weeks, months, and years of loneliness, suffering, pain, and fear. While a toy, a resting board, or a few minutes of “socialization” (if provided) may slightly ease the horrors of imprisonment, they do not make animal experimentation humane.

So Iams’ International Animal Care Advisory Board is in a predicament. While it can evaluate Iams’ program of animal experimentation and make recommendations, nothing it can say or do (short of calling on Iams to stop experimenting on dogs and cats) will change this one simple fact: Iams’ use of animals in laboratories is inherently cruel and, for that matter, unnecessary. In addition, Iams as well as the members of this board have no way of knowing what is happening to the animals inside the company’s numerous contract testing facilities at any given time.

No person, organization, or corporation that truly cares about animals would ever condone or support the use of animals in pet food tests. This is why we have asked those individuals who sit on Iams’ International Animal Care Advisory Board to call on Iams to stop conducting nutritional experiments on cats and dogs and, instead, rely only on laboratory analysis of formulas for nutritional composition, in-home palatability studies using dogs and cats whose human companions have volunteered them for such tests, and collaborative studies with private veterinary clinics that have patients who have diseases or conditions of interest to the company.

We have sent each of the members of Iams’ International Animal Care Advisory Board a letter and videotape detailing the results of our investigation into the company’s use of animals in nutritional experiments and explained why we believe that the best advice one can give the company is to end its use of animals in laboratories. We will share with the public their responses and profiles in the near future. Thank you for your efforts in behalf of animals.