By Emily Loudon

According to DoSomething.org, “Over 100 million animals are burned, crippled, poisoned and abused in US labs each year.” Animal testing has been around for a long time, and the results have always been unreliable about whether or not a product would pass a human trial.

Animal testing is a cruel way to get results when there are many other alternative ways. The Leaping Bunny sign means that the products were not tested on animals, nor were animal ingredients used to make the product. Buying products with this sign is a great way to help support the end of animal testing. Companies cannot get a Leaping Bunny sign unless they prove to the animal protection groups that they are cruelty-free. For a full list of cruelty-free companies, you can go onto the Humane Society website.

According to the Humane Society, animal testing “refers to procedures performed on living animals for purposes of research into basic biology and diseases, assessing the effectiveness of new medical products and testing human health and or environmental safety of consumer and industry products such as cosmetics, house hold cleaners, food additives,

pharmaceuticals and industrial/argo chemicals.”

Take a minute to let that sink in; most of the products you use on a daily basis were tested on animals. Household cleaners were tested in the eyes of rabbits with a Draize eye irritation test. The rabbits are held with restraints and the chemicals are dropped in without any painkillers and a lot of times the rabbits break their necks or backs trying to escape the cruel fate they are put through. Can you imagine the uproar we would get if we did something like this to humans? Why is there not uproar for the animals?

According to the Humane Society, there are about “50 alternative methods” to animal testing: “using blood of human volunteers,”  “using artificial skin” which is produced in labs, or even using the “eyes of deceased meat animals” for certain tests. Scientists are also working on ways to use computers, which is safer and more effective than animal testing. Animal testing is extremely outdated and the results are unreliable on how it the tested product will react on humans.

Now, you might be thinking, “why would I want to change something that has been helping to improve science for about 100 years?” The reason is not only for the benefit of the animals being tortured daily, but for the benefit of human kind. With these alternative methods, medicines and products will be safer because we will know how they will affect humans, not animals. Alternative methods are the way to go.

For a list of the 50 alternative testing methods you can look at AltTox.org. Also, look for the Leaping Bunny symbol on products when you are shopping. You can help end animal testing.