The Pros And Cons Of The Animal Welfare Act

Due to the extreme controversy over the topic the Animal Welfare Act was signed into law. This protects the animals and sets guidelines and laws at both the state and local level in order to regulate animal research. This law states that animals must give the animals: access to clean food and water, regular inspections by vets, proper enclosure size, and appropriate temperature. So the animals are not being exposed to improper conditions, or they shouldn’t be according to the law. Also in order to even use animals for research you must be approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee or the IACUC. It would be nice to believe that the animal in experiments don’t suffer unnecessary pain and mistreatment. However this is untrue. This is where the cons to animal testing come in. On the subject of guidelines set to protect the animals not all places follow these guidelines. The most controversial and perhaps inhumane documented treatment was the case that launched PETA. This case was the Silver Spring Monkeys. In this horrible case monkeys were put under such duress and treated so poorly that they started to self-mutilate themselves. Their cages were full of feces and urine. Not only this but the cages themselves were covered in rust. The experimenters would sever the spinal nerves of the monkeys causing them to lose the …show more content…
This particular experimentation checks for eye irritation. It is performed by taking the rabbit’s eye and sewing it open while placing the substance in one eye and leaving the other as a control. This is observed after one hour in the beginning then at twenty-four hour intervals for fourteen days. During this time the rabbit experiences extreme fear and pain. Often the rabbit suffers from redness, bleeding, ulcers, and blindness. After the test is completed the animals are killed, cut open to see what resulted on the inside, and then thrown out. That is in no way