Tuesday 17 January 2012

Are you funding animal experiments (without knowing about it)?

Animal Aid are currently running a campaign warning people that charities they may be supporting may be conducting animal experiments. According to their literature, two of the worst offenders are The British Heart Foundation and Cancer Research UK.

They've now come up with a list of charities that do fund animal experiments and those that don't. To see where charities stand, visit www.animalaid.org.uk  

Why should we care about whether these charities fund experiments on animals?

2 main reasons -
ONE - These experiments cause unnecessary suffering to animals that have no one to speak for them as they live out a miserable and painful existence. Labs are poorly monitored (if they are monitored at all), condemning many animals to a lifetime of suffering in a cage.

TWO - They are wasting your money.
Experiments on animals are unreliable and just because a drug or procedure works on an animal doesn't mean it will work on a human. These animals are often given diseases and conditions they wouldn't naturally get or genetically engineered to have them.

Charities who fund experiments on animals claim they do it because they want to find a cure. The truth is animal experiments often take us further away from a cure and not closer. They waste money and time. Time that people who are ill may not have to wait for a cure or a treatment.

It’s not just in the UK that you could be unwittingly funding animal experiments. Most charities are hardly upfront about it. This surely begs the question - surely if this is essential they would tell people they pay for animal research?

For charities in the USA who don't fund animal experiments, visit - www.humaneseal.org

You can check out charities in the following countries –
USA
Canada
Australia
UK