Animal Cruelty is the infliction by omission or commission by humans of suffering or harm upon animals. The United States is one of the highest in the world, and there’s no sign of slowing down anytime soon. 110 million animals like cats, dogs, mice, rabbits, and hamsters are killed in U.S. laboratories every year. They are tested for medicine and makeup to ensure the product’s toxicity is safe for humans.
Animal cruelty is wholly banned by around two-thirds of the world. Still, most African countries, like Madagascar, Morocco, Angola, and some Asian countries, have no law stating this is illegal. One way companies use animals for testing is to ensure the safety of drugs. Scientist Ian Murnaghan said, “Drugs in particular can carry significant dangers with their use, but animal testing allows researchers to initially gauge the safety of drugs before commencing trials on humans.” He also said, “Human harm is reduced, and human lives are saved.” Sometimes, companies try to look for alternatives if the main product fails during testing, which means more animals would be used, and those animals would most likely die from the effects of the alternative product. In contrast, the final product won’t affect humans at all.
The United States has some laws that are against animal cruelty. The “Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture,” or PACT, was signed in November 2019 and added criminal offenses if they post videos of crushing animals to death. Most majority of laws, however, are at the state level. Pennsylvania passed a law in 2016 that states what qualifies as cruelty, like recklessly ill-treating an animal, overloading it, beating them, abandoning them, or abusing the animal. Pennsylvania considers Cruelty a second-degree misdemeanor, giving you up to two years in jail and/or a $5,000 fine. Perkasie, PA resident Erica Bergey said that she would “never beat an animal because if I do, I will go to jail.” Erica is a cat owner and loves her two cats very much. She has had cats ever since she was a kid and would like to get more cats if she wanted to. If scientists want to test their new drugs on anything, they should use simple organisms, like bacteria, to study bioprocesses and modeling to predict the effects of the drug.
Animal cruelty may not look bad for someone if they live in an area that allows this to happen, but to most people, it’s wrong to see many animals suffer from things that humans would later use and not see them with families, either with humans or with their own. No animal should suffer pain from multi-million dollar companies and be used as a test monkey for future products and medicines. The testers should try using their tests on humans because most products go out for people. If they don’t, they should limit how many animals should get tested instead of using animals like they’re nothing. If the people care a lot about the animals, the state should increase the cruelty charges and have the animals live nice, friendly, comfortable, and livable lives.
Sources:
https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/animal-cruelty-facts-and-stats
https://vittana.org/11-pros-and-cons-of-animal-rights
https://connectusfund.org/list-of-8-key-pros-and-cons-of-animal-rights
https://animal-testing.procon.org/
https://popcenter.asu.edu/content/animal-cruelty-0
https://www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-about-animal-testing
https://www.aboutanimaltesting.co.uk/using-animals-testing-pros-versus-cons.html
