Animal cruelty - lack of support on threads

How am I using cognitive dissonance?

I know EXACTLY what happens on a chicken farm. In a chicken house. I know how calves are reared. I KNOW what happens.

I grew up with a farming family and worked the abbatoir in the summer after my a levels.

how is it cognitive dissonance?

Would you allow it for pain relieving drugs? For blood pressure medications? For anti depressants? Hrt? Laxatives?

I try to avoid products that have been shipped miles, buy local where I can. I eat mostly vegetarian, have meat maybe once a week.

I already said I don’t buy cosmetics tested on animals?

You’re kind of highlighting what is so abhorrent about animal testing. That you can’t imagine anyone willingly undergoing it. But it’s ok to force and breed sentient animals for the purpose? I mean if you’re ok with that, that’s your moral choice and just say that. But presenting it as ‘we have to do it to animals because humans wouldn’t agree’ is pretty weird.

Arguably a necessary evil for cancer or other life saving medications. Much harder to justify for other drugs.

Yes me too. Once youve seen or heard something upsetting and disturbing, you can't unsee or unhear it. But there's a real hardness in society nowadays, so we could be a dying breed.

@theyhavenovoice I don’t buy cosmetics tested on animals. However, I have to take a swathe of medication every day to keep me alive and reduce my pain levels. Afaik all medications are tested on animals. What do you suggest I do?

Also, the abuses and intensification of animal farming has been incremental. Added to which, there is a huge marketing effort to portray e.g. happy cows in fields, delighted to have had their calves taken away so that they can “give” their milk to their darling humans.

The idea that hens that are not in battery farms lead happy, sunny, clucking spacious lives is active misinformation.

And darling little lambs are eaten.

Pretty much every bit of advertising related to animal products that is on supermarket shelves is deception. I don’t blame people for not knowing that, but I am appalled that, once informed, many people are indifferent.

@TheGoldenOwl
The technology for the COVID vaccines had been in process for years. It wasn't a case of starting from scratch.

Lets be clear, I would be very happy if there never had to be any more animal testing. It is currently a legal requirement that pharma companies cannot dip out of. Every year, there are advances, but science and progress take time. It does not take much imagination to think of the problems it would cause if we just dropped it all overnight, without fully validated alternatives in place. In silico testing and AI modelling is bringing things forwards at pace, but does not remove all risk of off target, unanticipated side effects.

Those posters who think it is never justified, if your child needed life saving medication which had been tested on animals, would you refuse that medication?

"Every single medicine has been through animal testing, whether it is for humans or animals (what should medicines for pets be tested on?). I hope all those who are opposed to it remember their position when it is they or their family member who is dying and they decline anything which has been tested on animals."

@RedWineCupcakes I see what you're saying but

It's perfectly ok to accept the advances that have happened, because they have happened and there is nothing we can do about that. Those animals have suffered and are gone. And at the same time say "but this way of doing things needs to stop. we have alternatives, we need to use them (and accept the additional cost) or develop them quicker."

Look what happened in COVID when the entire medical world threw their weight behind something. We can do it surely?

It’s never justified.

Oh, me?
The DM article is specifically targeted at WLI, 80% + of which are used by women. If you cannot see their goal, which is more women shaming, more guilt tripping, then more fool you. The language they use is deliberately inflammatory to get exactly the reaction this thread has provoked.

I am surprised that it is news to so many that dogs and primates are used in pharmaceutical research. Do people live under rocks? Does no one recall all the animal righs protestors in UK trying to get Huntingdon shut down? Which resulted in the UK having both the highest animal welfare standards in the world at the time, as well as the toughest legislation against animal rights extremists (because digging up people's dead grannies is extremel).

Every single medicine has been through animal testing, whether it is for humans or animals (what should medicines for pets be tested on?). I hope all those who are opposed to it remember their position when it is they or their family member who is dying and they decline anything which has been tested on animals.

As for using human volunteers, as some are advocating for, if you pay people, you are buying their consent. Which most on MN appear to be opposed to. And generally only attracts the desperate/impoverished.

What prompted the change?

YABU for thinking that everyone is as interested and engaged with the same issues as you are.

Ni I won't be because I can accept that - for the next while - animal testing will exist.

I'm not happy about it and I will join any campaign that seriously wants to make, say, the beagles conditions much better.

Sometimes we have to accept that bad things are done in our names.