Over the years humans have risen to be the dominant species of this planet but that doesn’t mean that we have the right to
mistreat the other inhabitants of this planet for our use. I believe that animal testing is cruel and degrading to the
animals that we as humans decide to use as experiments.
I’ve always liked animals, thought they were cute but very little did I know that animal testing can be so harmful to them. When I was younger I just thought that running some mice through a maze was animal testing but it opened my eyes when I watched some news report that showed footage of what really goes on in some labs and it goes beyond just running a few mice through a maze. You got cosmetic companies sticking lipstick in the eyes of rabbits, animals locked up in tiny cages to see what kind of psychological effects may happen, monkeys pumped full of hormones and much much more. Just seeing images such as those has really opened my eyes up to the world and got me thinking about what products I choose to buy. I thought about how lucky I am to have my
freedom. I thought about what it’ll be like to get shoved into a cage and injected with god knows what. But in a way it also left me with a responsibility to act. I really don’t think humans are that much better than other animals as most of us would like to think.
Either way animals are still living creatures that have emotions and are entitled to live a full and natural life. I’d like to be more of an activist on issues such as this but most of the time I just don’t bother or think that somebody else would do it. I can say that I try my best to avoid products that do test on animals. I’m free to choose what kinds of products to buy and what companies to support but there are limitations to that freedom. Most things don’t come with a label stating if any testing has been done. That would require much more inquires and research to be sure but who would actually take all that time an initiative to do so? It just isn’t possible to know for sure. It is hard to avoid the reality that so many things have been animal tested but if I am aware that a company is wrongfully hurting animals then by all means I would try to avoid supporting them.
But I can only be responsible to a certain extent and the problem is that it’s hard drawing the line to what rights animals do have. I eat meat and the house I live in was probably built on top of the homes of a few animals and etc. My whole way of living interferes with those of animals, which really makes me feel like I don’t have freedom in my decision making. No matter what an animal is always going to be mistreated somehow, but I would drive myself insane if I take the burden of all of that. I feel guilty at times that I’m contributing to the destruction of the natural order of the world just by living the way I do but I can’t change the world. But I can start by raising awareness of and try to get people to take a stand against animal testing. Eating meat is part of the food chain (even though some of the conditions cattle and etc live in aren’t too great) but performing experimentations on animals just draws the line.
It may be hard and more costly to change but there are alternatives to animal testing and we as human beings have the responsibility to do so. Though animals do not share the same level of intelligence or able to verbally communicate to us, do they not feel pain?