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Asked by raddon99 to Claire, Kate, Matt, Rob, Sam on 19 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by jhonny16, zareblydia.
Question: Animal testing is illegal in some places yet it still goes on, discuss.
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Sam Geen answered on 19 Jun 2013:
So yes, animal testing is being banned in some places for some things, but it’s not completely illegal in any country as far as I know (I could be wrong). Europe is banning it for things like make-up or shampoo that don’t save lives (the UK already banned this a while ago).
Animal testing is a difficult one. I’m a vegetarian, and I don’t support killing animals for food when you can eat other things. At the same time, animal testing saves lives if it helps cure diseases – if you kill a hundred animals but save thousands of people, is that worth it? I think so, although it’s a difficult problem, and I think we should try to be as careful as possible and treat the animals as kindly as possible. In Europe there are a lot of laws protecting research animals, and hopefully in the future we’ll be able to reduce testing on live animals using alternatives like computer models of things in our bodies.
50 to 100 million animals are killed for research across the world every year, mostly mice. 150 billion animals are killed each year for meat, most of these fish or chickens, which is 1000-3000 times more (this is a rough estimate). My opinion is that animal research saves lives, but eating meat when you don’t have to doesn’tMATOMO_URL So if we’re going to ban animal research, we should look carefully at the meat industry first, because that has the ability to be crueller to more animals.
*There’s a debate over whether being vegetarian or vegan is healthy. I’ve been a vegetarian for 13 years now and I’m fine so far, but of course you have to look at what happens to lots of people to make sure. And of course some people live in places where they can’t grow crops and where their only source of food is meat.
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Robert Woolfson answered on 19 Jun 2013:
Like Sam said, animal testing is very complicated. In this country we prioritise our own safety and thats a decision that changes from country to country.
However, my view is fairly simple. While testing on animals is not very nice, and if done poorly can be cruel and inhumane, we don’t have any alternative. If we want new medical treatments and we want to be as sure as we can they are safe before we start testing on humans, we need animal testing.
The day someone comes up with an alternative, I’ll happily consider it. Until then, we don’t really have much of choice.
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Matthew Pankhurst answered on 19 Jun 2013:
Animal testing is a very emotive subject (meaning people can be very passionate about it). On one hand, you have the well-being of animals who are capable of feeling discomfort and pain, and it’s wrong to want to cause them pain and suffering. On the other, you have all the medical technologies that have been because of animal testing. For instance, there are members of my family who would not be alive today if it wasn’t for animal testing, because the drugs that saved their lives were tested on animals first. It might be the case with your family too! It’s hard to wish that it has never happened, but at the same time it’s hard knowing that animals have more than likely suffered at some point. One view that was recently suggested to me was this: is the suffering that an animal experiences as a test subject in a lab any more or less suffering than it would be if it lived in the wild? Lab animals these days (we can only hope, I’m sure there are examples that are the opposite) are well fed, kept in comfortable environment and reproduce, which is what they strive to do in the wild. We need them healthy and “happy” to be sure we know if make them sick when the test is done (I know, this isn’t a great reason to keep animals healthy). I think the person that suggest this to be had a point, but it doesn’t stop it being a tricky question! Thanks for the tough one 🙂
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