The scope of their work is broad and ranges from encouraging the public to buy soaps, detergents, and clothes that are free of animal by-products to providing alternatives to animal research. Or they may point out the danger of certain types of traps and nets or demonstrate how animals actually live on a so-called factory farm.
These organizations may protest possible dangers to performing animals or urge the public to write members of Congress about a pending law that would affect animals. The common thread among their far-ranging efforts is their belief that humane living conditions should be provided to all species and cruelty abolished. They believe that one species should never be protected by the destruction of another. Their aims generally include a deep commitment to the preservation of all species, including humans, through protecting the whole natural environment.
The practical efforts of such groups are generally oriented toward action, with emphasis on educating the public and supporting legislation for the protection of animals. Many organizations focus on protecting a certain species or preventing a certain method of using animals. They launch campaigns that address the use of farm animals, performing animals, laboratory animals, animals in fur farms, race horses, and racing dogs. They may encourage a meatless lifestyle.
Although some groups will occasionally go beyond their own specific interest and recommend actions or collaborate with environmental groups, their focus is what generally distinguishes one group from another. Some organizations, though, are all-encompassing and take on all problems affecting animal welfare as a whole.
Some organizations rely solely on education; others are more oriented toward action. Some organizations were started by medical caretakers, such as veterinarians, doctors, or psychologists; others were begun by a cross-section of people of all social, occupational, and economic backgrounds. All are deeply concerned with the rights of animals.
The Animal Rights Movement
A major thrust for the animal rights movement came about four decades ago with the publication of the book Animal Liberation by the Australian Peter Singer. Until then, there was little cohesion between those who opposed vivisection (inhumane animal experimentation) and those who opposed the farming system. The book encouraged many groups to focus and dialogue with each other.
To many, the 1970s marked the beginning of an idea-that all animals, including humans, have rights and obligations. The term "animal rights" began to appear in print. And people found out there was no effective legal protection for animals used in medical or corporate laboratories, in farms, movies, or circuses.
The budding environmental movement showed us how whole species were becoming endangered or extinct because of pollution and habitat destruction. Biologists realized that different species have different responses to drugs and therefore couldn't always be reliable for testing drugs meant eventually for humans. Computer technology became refined enough to be used to simulate experiments, and in vitro techniques made research on human tissues viable for detecting diseases.
Prevention versus Cure
These years also produced scientists, doctors, and surgeons who were focusing more on the prevention of disease through clinical and epidemiological research than on surgical or medical cures developed through animal research. In fact, they doubt the efficacy of animal research, noting that after thirty-five years of research on cancer, often with animals, we are no closer than before to a cure. They may further point out that where animal models have yielded little information for the cure of Alzheimer's disease, autopsy studies have shown that aluminum may be a key to its cause.
Clinical and epidemiological research often points to prevention, rather than cure, as the best means of treating disease. Lifestyle and diet are often shown to be the major contributing factors in the cause of some diseases such as cancer, heart attack, and stroke. For example, the three main factors that seem to contribute to heart disease are high cholesterol, smoking, and high blood pressure. Alcohol consumption and pollution probably contribute to a lesser degree. Through effective preventive measures, these factors can be eliminated in our lifestyles, thus enabling us to avoid the more intrusive, more costly-and sometimes less effective-bypasses and transplants.
Epidemiological research has led many scientists to believe that cancer can be prevented through maintaining a low-fat diet, eliminating tobacco, and increasing beta carotene in your diet. Decreasing exposure to the sun many help prevent skin cancer.
Epidemiological studies in the late 1970s also found the unusual symptoms and malignancies of what turned out to be a major epidemic of our time-AIDS. Population studies demonstrated modes of transmission which led to ways of preventing infection.
Later, in vitro tests revealed what happens to the blood in human cells and tissues. Actually studying people with AIDS may identify the disease-fighting factors that characterize people who have successfully resisted the strain, without having to inject countless more animals with the disease. If successful, such a study could be a big step toward eliminating the disease.
Animal Research Alternatives
A related movement among medical researchers and scientists has been to replace experimental techniques using animals with animal alternatives producing the same results. For example, researchers who wish to use human, rather than animal, tissue in experiments can go to the National Disease Research Interchange, a nonprofit organization in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This group has provided medical researchers with more than 130 different types of human tissue. These tissues, retrieved from autopsies or surgical procedures, have been used to investigate such human diseases as diabetes, cancer, cystic fibrosis, and more than 50 others.
The Ames Test, a non-animal alternative testing procedure, has helped researchers determine whether certain substances cause genetic damage in salmonella bacteria. A synthetic copy of insulin, which has traditionally been taken from cows and pigs, is now widely available for diabetic patients. This synthetic -- humulin-- usually causes fewer allergic reactions than its animal-derived counterpart. In the field of oncology, a new method has been developed that tests potential drugs on the cells of human tumors. The results are then entered into a computer for analysis.
With all these advances in medical technology through non-animal clinical tests, computer simulations, and epidemiological research, it is no wonder that the idea of using animals in the laboratories seemed outmoded and slow when measured against the newer techniques. And it is no wonder that the idea of animal rights in the laboratory grew from an isolated concept to a full-fledged movement by the 1980s.
With the movement's growth came resistance from the corporations, medical schools, research facilities, and pharmaceutical firms the movement was attacking. Using animals in the laboratory and as part of medical training had become ingrained and was difficult to change. Corporations defended themselves bitterly against product safety lawsuits.
With knowledge about the prevention and tracking of disease expanding and coverage in the media increasing, other areas of animal life came under scrutiny. The investigation into the use of animal life progressed to the American farm.
Farming Reform
Many activists date the need for the animal rights movement to the 1960s when people began to see a change in farming methods. Before that, most farms were owned by families who had, in many cases, owned their farms for generations. Chickens, pigs, and cows, even though they were bred for slaughter, were seen roaming the farm land, leading a free and healthy life before being killed. Farmers personally fed the animals, saw to their health, and milked the cows by hand. The animals were allowed to lead a natural social life, and the mothers were allowed to stay with their young for an appropriate time and bear a normal number of young per year.
With the population explosion, however, there was a need to feed more and more people more quickly. Many fast-food franchises and chain supermarkets sprang up, needing cheap beef and chicken to supply daily to millions of people. In order to supply these proliferating franchises with enough meat, the whole farming business changed. Now many animals destined for human consumption are raised on huge factory farms.
In such places, according to animal protection groups, four to five laying hens are crammed into one-foot-square wire cages for their entire lives. Male chicks will be suffocated, drowned, or crushed to death, and females will have their beaks seared off to prevent them from pecking at and eating each other. Veal calves, taken from their mothers at birth, are chained to small pens where they cannot stand up or move and are kept on a synthetic diet that keeps their flesh white. This vitamin-deficient food is usually laced with antibiotics in an often unsuccessful attempt to prevent disease. These antibiotics may, ironically, increase human susceptibility to infectious diseases. None of these farm animals are protected under the Animal Welfare Act, which might assure them of humane treatment during their lifetimes.
Some people claim that modern factory farming, combined with farm subsidy programs, has led to the overproduction of cattle and chickens and even to the destruction of rain forests. Others say that affluent consumers' need for "milk-fed" veal has led to the substandard living conditions of veal calves. Still others blame the emphasis placed on milk consumption in adult humans for the fact that calves are deprived of their own mothers' milk.
About whatever the issue, the protest against factory farms and for more humane treatment of farm animals is growing and getting more publicity in the process. Organizations have formed and ads have been placed in newspapers, magazines, and public transportation systems. These groups actively work against the caged lives of veal calves, breeding sows, and laying hens; and against the health effects of the bovine growth hormone. They also frown upon animal patenting, which would greatly affect farm animals. Some groups encourage a meatless lifestyle, since there is some evidence that the consumption of animal fat leads to heart disease, cancer, and stroke.
