Against Animal Abuse

Dolphins and Whales in Captivity A study in 1985 revealed that of 32 killer whales examined after dying in aquariums around the world, half had died of bacterial infections, and one quarter of pneumonia. 53% of those dolphins who survive the violent capture die within 90 days. The average life span of a dolphin in the wild is 45 years; yet half of all captured dolphins die within their first two years of captivity. The survivors last an average of only 5 years in captivity. Every seven years, half of all dolphins in captivity die from capture shock, pneumonia, intestinal disease, ulcers, chlorine poisoning, and other stress-related illnesses. To the captive dolphin industry, these facts are accepted as routine operating expenses. In many tanks the water is full of chemicals as well as bacteria, causing many health problems in dolphins including blindness. When a baby dolphin is born in captivity, the news is usually kept secret until the calf shows signs of survival. Although marine mammals do breed in captivity, the birth rate is not nearly as successful as the one in the wild, with high infant mortality rates. Wild dolphins can swim 40 to 100 miles per day - in pools they go around in circles. Many marine parks subject their mammals to hunger so they will perform for their food. Jumping through hoops, tailwalking and playing ball are trained behaviors that do not occur in the wild. Confined animals who abuse themselves (banging their heads against the walls) are creating stimuli which their environment cannot supply. Dolphins in captivity tend to develop stereotypical behaviors (swimming in repetitive circle pattern, with eyes closed and in silence) because of boredom and confinement . This is equivalent to the swaying and pacing of primates, lions, tigers and bears confined in cages. Dolphins are predators of fish and spend up to half of their time in the wild hunting for food. Supplying dead fish results in less exercise and lack of mental stimulation, thus causing boredom. When trapped together, males often become agitated and domineering. This creates pecking orders (unknown in the wild) and unprovoked attacks on each other and the trainers. In the ocean, although fights are not unknown, the wild dolphins have a chance to escape. You can help by informing your Senators and Representative of your feelings on this issue. Be aware of articles about captive marine mammals in newspapers and magazines and be prepared to respond with letters to the editor. Let marine parks and aquaria know your position on capturing marine mammals from the wild and ask them voluntarily to discontinue this practice. Consider a grass-roots effort to enact state legislation that prohibits the display of newly caught marine mammals. Please join with The Humane Society of the United States, to add your voice to on-going efforts to protect all animals. We must continue our work to strengthen existing laws that protect marine mammals and to change the practices that harm them, in this country and abroad. Write to The Humane Society of the United States at 2100 L Street, NW, Washington, DC 20037 or call at (202) 452-1100 for more information.Why am I being put to sleep When there is a promise I need to keep Of playing, snuggling and giving joy To a little girl or lonely boy. God put me here to make them glad, Did I do something wrong? Was I bad?Animal Testing:YOUR tax dollars pay for countless animals experiments funded by the government! As many as 115 million animals are experimented on and killed in laboratories in the U.S. every year. Much of the experimentation-including pumping chemicals into rats' stomachs, hacking muscle tissue from dogs' thighs, and putting baby monkeys in isolation chambers far from their mothers-is paid for by you, the American taxpayer and consumer, yet you can't visit a laboratory and see how the government has spent your money. You can't even get an accurate count on the number of animals killed every year because experimenters and the government have decided that mice and rats and certain other animals don't even have to be counted.Animal experimentation is a multibillion-dollar industry fueled by massive public funding and involving a complex web of corporate, government, and university laboratories, cage and food manufacturers, and animal breeders, dealers, and transporters. The industry and its people profit because animals, who cannot defend themselves against abuse, are legally imprisoned and exploited. You'd probably be even more horrified to know that your tax dollars fund the same experiments by the federal government right here in the U.S.--and not just at the Defense Department. As unbelievable as it may seem, The U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requires by law that pesticides be tested on dogs, who are shoved into "inhalation chambers" where they try in vain to escape the deadly poisons that are pumped in. The Food and Drug Administration )FDA) requires companies marketing fluoride products to swab the teeth of 200 rats with the test substance for two weeks, at which time the animals are killed and their heads baked in an oven for an hour. While both the EPA and the FDA require massive amounts of animal testing for the marketing of industrial chemicals, vaccines, and drugs, other U.S. agencies that require and/or conduct animal testing include the Department of Agriculture, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and the Department of Transportation.A lethal poisoning test invented around the time of World War I--in which animals are force-fed increasing doses of a chemical until they die--is still the single most common animal test in use today. Government regulations still require chemical manufacturers to squirt burning chemicals into rabbits' eyes and onto their shaved skin. Some government-mandated tests kill more than 2,000 animals every time they are conducted. And not a single one of these animal tests has ever been formally proved to be relevant to or able to accurately predict human health effects. The EPA requires more animal testing than any other federal agency yet hasn’t banned a single toxic industrial chemical in more than a decade! Rather than working to reduce emissions and prevent human and environmental exposures to toxic chemicals, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has instead chosen to establish "acceptable" exposure levels based on the results of animal tests. In fact, the EPA requires more animal-based chemical toxicity testing than any other federal agency. The EPA has not banned a single toxic industrial chemical using its authority under the Toxic Substances Control Act, despite killing hundreds of thousands of animals and despite urgent calls to limit chemical exposures.U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Drugs: The marketing of drugs and other pharmaceutical products in the U.S. is controlled under the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act, which empowers the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research to require extensive toxicity testing on animals before a new drug is deemed "safe" for marketing. In order to satisfy FDA data requirements, thousands of rats, mice, rabbits, dogs, and primates are killed in "pre-clinical" laboratory poisoning experiments to assess the safety of new drugs (including all ingredients and even minor differences in formulation). Commonly required animal tests include the following: Acute (short-term) toxicity: 7 to 20 rats + dogs or primates Subchronic (14- to 180-days) toxicity: rats + dogs or primates Chronic (lifetime) toxicity: 120 rats + 32 dogs or primates Cancer effects: 400 rats + 400 mice Toxicity to reproduction: Segment I (reproductive toxicity in 2 generations): 2,500 rats Segment II (birth defects): 900 rabbits + 1,300 rats Segment III (peri- and postnatal effects): rats Metabolism and pharmacological interactions of active ingredients Specialty studies: Genetic toxicity: 80 hamsters/mice x 2 to 5 separate studies Immune-system toxicity: 32 rats Skin/eye/mucosal irritation: 3 rabbits per test Following this extensive battery of animal testing, drugs generally undergo four phases of clinical trials before they are considered for widespread human use. The fact that months or years of human studies are required over and above the standard battery of animal tests suggests that health authorities do not trust the results of animal experiments--and for good reason. A significant number of drugs are rejected during human clinical trials because they are found to cause toxic and other adverse health effects "not predicted" in pre-clinical animal experiments. In fact, a report by the U.S. General Accounting Office found that more than half (51.5 percent) of 198 drugs marketed between 1976 and 1985 caused serious adverse reactions, including heart failure, convulsions, seizures, kidney and liver failure, birth defects, and blindness, among other effects. All the drugs were animal-tested in accordance with international guidelines, yet most of these drugs had to be relabeled and severely restricted or withdrawn altogether.Companies NOT To Buy From...Heres ONLY Some Of The Companies That DO Test On Animals: 1.) Vidal Sassoon 2.) Clorox Bleach 3.) Cover Girl Make-up 4.) Crest Toothpaste 5.) Neutrogena 6.) Dawn Dishsoaps 7.) Sally Hansen 8.) Arm & Hammer 9.) BenGay 10.) Bounty Laundry Detergent 11.) Raid Bug Spray 12.) Pine-Sol 13.) Kleenex 14.) Giorgio 15.) Lava Soaps 16.) Listerine 17.) Lysol 18.) Vaseline 19.)Windex 20.) Glade Air-Spray 21.) Scotch Tape 22.) Suave Beauty Products 23.) Tilex Mold Remover 24.) Tide Laundry Detergent 25.) Woolite 26.) Mop & Glo 27.) Nair Hair Remover 28.) Coppertone Sunscreen 29.) Banana Boat Sunscreen 30.) Carpet Fresh 31.) Drano Drain Cleaner 32.) Finesse Beauty Products 33.) Polident Denture 34.) Flame Glow 35.) 3M 36.) Ban Roll-On 37.) Cutex Nail Products 38.) EcoLab 39.) Lever Soap 40.) Sun StarCruelty-Free Companies That You Should SUPPORT...Here's ONLY Some Of The Companies That DO NOT Test On Animals:1.) Aloe Vera Of America 2.) Abercrombie and Fitch 3.) Avon 4.) Bath and Body Works 5.) Victoria's Secret 6.) Urban Decay 7.) Tommy Hilfiger (Estee' Lauder) 8.) Revlon ( Almay, Jean Nate') 9.) PetGaurd 10.) Paul Mitchell 11.) OxyFresh Worldwide 12.) Mary Kay Cosmetics 13.) Lightning Products 14.) Lander Co. 15.) K.B. Products 16.) Fruit of The Earth 17.) Estee' Lauder 18.) Dr. Goodpet 19.) Candy Kisses Natural Lip-Balm 20.) Bug Off 21.) Bonne Bell 22.) Almay..

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