I was saddened to learn that the number of animals used in (inhumane) animal experiments in the European Union increased by 3.2% between 2002 and 2005 — that’s an increase of 339,279 animals. France leads the European countries in number of (inhumane) experiments at 2.2 billion animals used in 2005 (though that’s apparently down 40% from France’s 1990 number, which is a very good thing). Austria wins the most humane European Union member country title with only 167 animals used in any experiments in 2005 — apparently Austria has banned cosmetic animal testing entirely, and has a strong commitment to decreasing medical animal testing — Austria has even instituted some sort of governmental/legal commitment to promote the development of alternative methods in scientific research.

Overall, 12.1 million animals died in laboratory experiments in the European Union in 2005. As you can see in the chart (sorry it’s so small — you’ll have to click on it to read it — the wordpress photo editor isn’t working today apparently) — rodents and rabbits made up 78% of the total, with mice being the most commonly used rodent (53%) followed by rats at 19%. The second most used group was cold-blooded animals (which surprised me — I didn’t realize that many reptiles were tortured in experiments) — at 15%. The third biggest group of animals was birds at 5% of the total (birds?!). Horses/donkeys/pigs/goats/sheep/cattle made up 1.1% of the total. Non-human primates made up 0.1% of the total. No great apes were used in any experiments (yay!). Other animals that were used were: hamsters, ferrets, gerbils, old world jerboas, chinchillas, beavers, ground squirrels, aremenio, foxes, badgers, seals, otters, fitchew, boars, bats and shrews, llamas, moles, European bison and red deer, coturnix japonica and bob-white quail, poultry species, zebra finches, canaries, parakeets, parrots, and farmed avian species.

Most of these animals — 60% — were used in experiments that will eventually help human medicine, veterinary medicine, dentistry, and “fundamental biology” studies. 15.3% were used in production and quality control of products and devices for human medicine, veterinary medicine, and dentistry. 8% were used for toxicological and safety evaluations. 5.5% were used for testing cosmetics and toiletries.

I’m not going to argue against any of these inhumane experiments, much as I dislike them, because most of them will save human lives — other than to say that I hope they will save human lives and not be wasted, and I hope scientists are strenuously looking for other ways to perform these experiments using in vitro techniques instead of live animals. (Except for the 5.5% of the animals that were used for testing cosmetics or toiletries — I think those are awful, and I’m glad they will be stopped when the ban on animal testing goes into effect in 2013.)

But what really bugs me is the language of this report.  I’ve tried to replicate the exact language as it appeared in the report in my descriptions above — no animals were “hurt” or “killed” they were instead “used,” and no acknowledgment of their sacrifice is made.  (I’d like to apologize to the writers of this report for attacking their language — I suspect the writers were forced to use this kind of language to be taken seriously in the scientific community — and to be fair I’d like to state for the record that I think this is a beautifully written report that is far, far easier to read than many of the animal testing things I’ve read lately, and it’s a great resource for people who are against animal testing.)

But anyway, these 12.1 million animals (unwillingly) sacrificed their well-being and lives for the betterment of (human) science. Yet no humans have thanked them, or acknowledged the suffering they go through to make our lives better. This really makes me feel like we’re really ungrateful as a society. I wish we had views towards animals more like what I imagine some Native American cultures have — at least, I’ve heard some Native American cultures support hunting and eating animals, but they then thank the animals for their sacrifice and express gratitude to the animals for providing them with sustenance (just to be clear, I think veganism would be even better, but I do prefer gratitude to no gratitude). I found at least one Cherokee legend that describes this sort of attitude on this firstpeople.us website. Isn’t that a much more graceful way to live? Rather than “using” animals and pretending no sacrifice was involved?

Tags : animal testing, austria, birds, cherokee, chinchillas, eu, ferrets, france, hamsters, mice, rabbits, rats, reptiles, rodents