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FULL REPORT Animal Rights May 24, 1991 • Volume 1 Introduction After recent gains, activists are now under attack Overview By Marc Leepson, Marc Leepson Background Introduction ISSUE TRACKER for Related Reports Current Situation Wildlife and Endangered Species The 1980s saw a new kind of activism in the animal rights movement. Groups such as People for Feb. 17, 2012 Invasive Species Outlook the Ethical Treatment of Animals borrowed tactics from other protest movements to publicize their Oct. 2010 Wildlife Smuggling concerns, including the use of animals in research and product testing. The number of animals used in cosmetics testing has been reduced significantly and the conditions of animals used in Jun. 03, 2005 Endangered Species Act Chronology biomedical research have improved. But now the scientific community is mounting an aggressive counterattack against the animal rights movement. The AMA, the National Academy of Sciences Sep. 15, 2000 Mass Extinction Short Features and federal officials have condemned the over zealousness of animal rights activists and accused Oct. 01, 1999 Endangered Species them of hindering much-needed medical research. If current trends continue, they warn, advances Act Bibliography in fighting cancer and AIDS could be hindered. Apr. 19, 1996 Protecting Endangered Species The Next Step Go to top Aug. 28, 1992 Marine Mammals Vs. Fish Overview Footnotes Jun. 21, 1991 Endangered Species Every year in laboratories in the United States and around the world, tens of millions of animals are May 24, 1991 Animal Rights used in scientific experiments to test everything from suspected carcinogens to the toxicity of anti- Comments per spirants. Scientists and animal researchers concede that some animals suffer physical or BROWSE RELATED TOPICS: mental pain in the course of this research, but they defend experiments of this kind as essential to Civil Rights and Civil Liberty Issues Permissions human health. Many of the medical breakthroughs of the past century resulted from research using laboratory animals. READER COMMENTS (2) Most Americans accept the use of animals in scientific research as a necessary, if unfortunate, "" consequence of society's need to experiment on non-humans for society's sake. But an Lorenuh, salinas- hartnell college increasingly vocal minority wants to ban most, and in some cases all, animal research. They say many experiments are needlessly repetitive, inflict unnecessary pain and do not promote human "I am doing a research paper on health and safety. how Animal Testing is wrong, and this article helped me greatly focus These individuals are members of the so-called “animal rights” movement, which uses a variety of my thoughts. thank you for your tactics to promote the humane treatment and well-being of animals. Their far-ranging concerns amazing article and views on the include not only the use and abuse of animals in biomedical experimentation, but also animal topic. It helped me better testing of cosmetics and other non-medical products, animal trapping for fur, the dissection of understand. . . ." animals in high school and college biology classes and the eating of meat and dairy products. Mackenzie , Centerville High School The animal rights issue is not new. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), the Humane Society of the United States and other animal welfare groups have been View All Comments around for over 100 years. But in the past decade, the animal rights movement has taken on a more militant posture. Groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have borrowed the tactics of earlier protest movements to help publicize their cause. These range from public demonstrations, media campaigns and boycotts to raids on medical laboratories to “liberate” research animals.

These tactics have brought unprecedented public attention to the issue of animal rights. In the past few years, the number of animals used in cosmetics testing has been significantly reduced and the conditions of laboratory animals used in biomedical research have greatly improved. There also is evidence that the animal rights movement's aggressive campaign against the fur industry has led to a drop in sales.

Groups such as the American Medical Association and the National Academy of Sciences and government officials such as Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis W. Sullivan and former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop have accused animal rights activists of misleading the public and using terrorist tactics to further their agenda. They say federal and state laws now ensure that animals are used humanely in research. They also say animal rights activists are hampering much-needed medical research. If this trend continues, they say, advances in fighting many diseases, including cancer and AIDS, could be drastically slowed. Such concerns have led the research and. scientific communities to launch an aggressive counteroffensive against the animal rights movement. The two sides are now using many of the same tactics to win the hearts and minds of the American public. Through this emotional climate some fundamental questions have emerged.

Do animals have the same fundamental rights as humans?

Much of the opposition to the use of animals in research stems from the philosophical/ethical position known as “animal rights.” Some, but not all, animal rights activists believe that animals have inherent legal and human rights, just as humans do. According to this viewpoint, humans do not have the right to use animals for any reason, including research, recreation or food.

“We don't believe animals are on earth to do whatever we want them to do,” says Amy Bertsch, a special projects assistant and spokesperson for PETA. Ingrid Newkirk, PETA's co-founder and national director, points to Charles Darwin's observation “that the only difference between humans and other animals [is] a difference of degree, not kind.” Newkirk adds: “If you ground any concept of human rights in a particular attribute, then animals will have to be included. Animals have rights.”

The vast majority of animal welfare activists are much more concerned about the humane treatment of animals than in the philosophical debate over animal rights. They take the position that researchers have a responsibility to minimize the pain and distress of laboratory animals. They also say researchers should (1) only use animals when there are no other reliable testing alternatives, (2) eliminate unnecessary, or unnecessarily painful, experiments and (3) provide society with an accounting of their treatment of animals.

Although they disagree on many issues, animal welfare groups and the more militant animal rights groups have a common goal. Both are working for “the protection of animals, seeing that animals are not mistreated,” says John Gleiber, executive secretary of the Animal Welfare Institute. “It's basically a question of degree.”

Some members of the medical and scientific communities have been trying to wrest the ethical high ground from the animal rights movement. They take the position that it's unethical not to use animals in research because animal experiments can lead to medical discoveries that improve the health and well-being of both humans and animals. It would be “immoral and selfish not to use animals in research today given the harm that could accrue to future generations if such research were halted,” the National Academy of Science's Committee on the Use of Animals in Research concluded in a recent report. A committee set up by the American Medical Association to look into the issue of animal research reached a similar conclusion. Depriving “humans (and even animals) of advances in medicine that result from research with animals is inhumane and fundamentally unethical,” the committee concluded.

Frederick K. Goodwin, administrator of the Department of Health and Human Services' Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Administration, which funds biomedical research, accuses the more militant animal rights groups of having a hidden agenda. He says they focus a lot of attention on abuses of animals in research laboratories to try to win public support. But in his view, they are less interested in protecting individual animals from abuse than in promoting their extreme philosophy of animal rights, which Goodwin says includes the belief that “animals have a right, in effect, not to be cared for at all by humans. They are co-equal species.”

Goodwin claims animal rights activists are focusing on the biomedical issue because scientific experiments are a relatively easy target. “Very few people have a real direct stake in research and very few people understand research or why animals are important and why they are the critical linchpin between the test tube and the patient,” he says. “It's a political decision that this is one of the most vulnerable uses of animals.” Animal rights activists “figure that if they can knock [medical use] off, then the [other parts of their agenda] would be easy.”

Franklin Loew, dean of the Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, has another explanation for the public's response to the animal rights movement. He says a lot of it has to do with the way Americans view animals. The only animals most Americans come into contact with are their pets, he says, which “are literally members of the family.” As a result, Americans tend to anthropomorphize animals of all sorts—giving them human characteristics and thinking of them as if they were human. “[F]ewer than 2 percent of us live on farms,” Loew says. “The rest of us live in cities or towns. That has created an ‘urban prism’ from which we now view animals.… As a result, I think their moral status has been elevated.” Loew says this has colored people's perceptions of the animal rights issue. “My sense is that Americans… want to do the right thing,” he says, and on the issue of using animals in biomedical research “we're a little confused now.”

How extensive is the use of animals in biomedical research and are there reliable alternatives?

Official estimates are that between 17 million and 22 million animals—90 percent of which are rats and mice—are used in biomedical research, education and testing every year. PETA claims the number is much larger than official statistics indicate. According to its research, 60 million to 100 million animals are killed every year in research projects.

Whatever the actual number, many people believe it could be greatly reduced. “[W]hen you talk about the use of laboratory animals, you're talking about a lot of redundancy,” says John Gleiber of the Animal Welfare Institute. Researchers are using 10 animals “when they could use one. They're using one to [repeat] something that's [already] been proved in some cases.”

Many people believe the number of animals used in research could be reduced without sacrificing scientific and medical research. “We are opposed to medical research on animals, but we have to be pragmatic,” says Cleveland Amory, the founder and president of the Fund for Animals. “There are some absolutely essential areas of medicine, like cancer and transplants, that so far apparently have had to use animals. But I want to see [the number] come down, step by step.”

Researchers say the number of animals used in research has come down in recent years, but it's not clear whether this can be traced to pressure from the animal rights movement. Dr. Alan Goldberg, director of the Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing at the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, says in vitro (non-animal) testing has been an integral part of scientific research for decades. He maintains that the alternatives that have been developed in the last 10– 15 years more than likely would have come about without any push from the animal rights movement. On the other hand, he says, “the public awareness that has occurred - like the forming of my center [in 1981]—is directly related to the animal activists' activities.”

Animal rights advocates say their support for the development of alternative methods of testing belies claims by the scientific community that animal activists are “anti-science.” They point out that, aside from lessening the suffering of animals, some in vitro alternatives are more reliable and more cost effective than animal tests. “One of the great virtues of science has always been its self- definition of questioning traditional ways of doing things and attempting to think through what is truly necessary and sufficient for solving any problem,” says longtime animal rights activist Henry Spira. The development of more alternative procedures “will generate further progress with benefit to animals, to scientific research, and to the enhancement of human health.”

Scientists say “alternatives” to animal research should more accurately be thought of as “adjuncts” to animal research because both are needed in virtually all biomedical experiments. They also say scientists use animals only when there are no in vitro methods available to answer certain questions. Scientists “prefer test tubes in which they can put an exact amount of a chemical,” says Frederick Goodwin. “But if you're going to make the test-tube experiment ultimately mean something, which is why you're doing the research in the first place, then you've got to go into a living system.”

Goodwin claims animal testing will never be totally eliminated. “In biomedical research we're not in the business of knowledge for knowledge's sake. We're interested in solving problems,” he says. “So unless we can take our basic science knowledge back into patients, there's no point in [doing an experiment].… And you can't go directly from a test tube into a patient. You have to go through the animal model as the intervening step. The notion that somehow you can take that piece out and still have a biomedical research establishment is absurd.”

But for most Americans, the issue of using animals in biomedical research is not a black and white one. Like other aspects of the animal rights controversy, it involves, as Frederick Loew puts it, “a whole lot of intermediary positions. It's not easy to be simply for or against it.” The public is going “through an almost ethical calculus,” Loew says. Public opinion polls show that before Americans will support an experiment, they want to be “reassured that the social stakes are high, that this is important work” and “that the animals are being cared for in accordance with the law.”

Alan Goldberg says that a “fragile balance” must be struck in the future as the research community moves toward replacing animal testing with in vitro alternatives. “We can extol the benefits of animals, but we have to simultaneously extol the benefits of in vitro methodology,” Goldberg says. “The scientific method is not an ‘either or’ situation. It's not animals or alternatives. It's a combination of clinical studies, whole animal studies and in vitro methodology.”

Should we use animals to test cosmetics and other non-medical products?

Many people find this a more difficult question to answer because it doesn't involve research to eliminate life-threatening diseases or directly aid human health. “The notion of suffering being induced for a product associated with vanity is politically powerful,” says Franklin Loew. “Despite the fact that people buy a lot of cosmetics, cosmetics is not very important compared with AIDS research or testing for hip replacement techniques. The cosmetics industry is more vulnerable. They don't want their reputation sullied. It's an image-conscious industry. There's not one cosmetics executive who isn't aware and worried about the controversy.”

The results of a survey commissioned by Advertising Age magazine last year indicate significant public disapproval of the use of animals in cosmetics testing. Sixty percent of those adults questioned by the Gallup Organization said they opposed animal testing on cosmetics and toiletries such as shampoo, lipstick and perfume, and nearly 90 percent said they would buy cosmetics products that had not been tested on animals.

In response to the public's sensitivity on the issue, many large cosmetics and toiletries companies have abandoned animal testing. But a lot of testing still goes on, despite the fact that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not require it and newly developed alternative, non- animal tests are widely available.

PETA claims that 14 million animals “suffer and die” each year in experiments to test the safety of cosmetics and household cleaning products. “Substances ranging from eye shadow and soap to furniture polish and oven cleaner are tested on rabbits, dogs, and other animals, despite the fact that the test results do not help prevent or treat human illness or injury,” PETA says.

FDA Commissioner David A. Kessler said recently that his agency has encouraged the development of alternative, non-animal tests, but “none of these tests has been accepted as replacements to animal testing by the scientific community.” The FDA's “basic position” on the issue, Kessler said, is that “the use of animal tests by industry to establish the safety of regulated products is necessary to minimize the risks from such products to humans.”

Johnson & Johnson, the giant health-care product manufacturer, says that for product safety reasons it uses a minimal number of animal tests. The company says it uses animals judiciously and ethically and uses in vitro tests “whenever possible.” “We look upon product safety as a moral obligation,” the company's board of directors said recently, “especially since babies and young children continue to be one of the most important user groups of Johnson & Johnson toiletries and non-medical personal care products. The company has a special obligation to assure their safety by producing the mildest, gentlest products possible. We will not compromise the safety of any of our consumers by eliminating the essential animal research stage of product development.”

While animal rights groups continue their campaign to further reduce or even eliminate the use of animals in cosmetics testing, an increasing number of companies have begun marketing “cruelty- free” cosmetics, personal care and household products—ones not tested on animals. The majority of these companies are small operations that sell their products in natural food stores. But recently larger companies such as Estée Lauder Corp. and the Limited Inc. have brought out lines of cosmetics whose ingredients are not tested on animals.

The Body Shop International, a personal care products retail chain begun in Great Britain in the early 1970s, uses prominently displayed signs saying that animal testing is “cruel, unnecessary and rejected by The Body Shop.” The company only uses in vitro procedures or human volunteers to test its products. “We have found, over time, that human testing is reliable,” says Michael Waldock, the president of Body Shop U.S. “There's no rational reason… to use animal tests.”

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Background

Philosophical Origins

Philosophers and theologians have discoursed on the rights of animals since the time of the ancient Greeks. Aristotle performed experiments on animals, including dissection, in the fourth century B.C. His writings indicate he was interested in the differences and similarities of humans and animals. “[A]ll animals,” he wrote in On the Soul, Book II, “have one sense at least, viz., touch, and whatever has a sense has the capacity for pleasure and pain.” But Aristotle believed the crucial difference between animals and humans was that animals do not possess intelligence. Since animals are not rational beings, he wrote, they are “by nature slaves” and “should be under the rule of a master.”

The Old Testament, which contains many references to animals, generally propounds the view that humans are made in God's image and granted dominion over animals. But some Christian denominations, including the Seventh-day Adventists, interpret certain biblical passages as instructing mankind not to eat meat. The King James version of the Bible, for example, in Genesis 1:29, says: “And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.”

Buddhism and Hinduism, which incorporate a belief in the concept of reincarnation, grant animals a higher status than they have in Western religion. Followers of these religions generally refrain from eating animals for ethical and moral reasons.

René Descartes, regarded as the father of modern philosophy, believed that animals do not have immortal souls, like humans, and also that they do not have consciousness and cannot feel pleasure or pain. “My opinion is not so much cruel to animals as indulgent to men,” Descartes wrote in a 1649 letter, “since it absolves them from the suspicion of crime when they eat or kill animals.”

Or, Descartes might have added, when they used animals in medical experiments—which he did himself. William Harvey, the pioneering, 17th-century English physician, used experiments on deer in research that led to his discovery of the precise nature of the human cardiovascular system. In the 19th century, several prominent French scientists—including Claude Bernard, a physiologist who made important discoveries about the pancreas and liver, and Louis Pasteur, who helped develop immunizations for anthrax and rabies—relied heavily on experiments using animals. Bernard, in his influential 1865 book, An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, wrote of vivisection's indispensable use in physiological research.

In contrast, Jeremy Bentham, the 18th-century English jurist-philosopher, argued that every living creature should be treated equally. Bentham, the founder of modern utilitarian philosophy, believed, as many animal rights advocates do today, that all sentient beings have equal interests. A “full- grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month old,” Bentham wrote in The Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789). “But suppose the case were otherwise.… The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but Can they suffer?”

Legal Protections

The suffering of animals was the impetus for the formation of the first animal welfare organizations. England's Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was founded in 1824 to help protect farm animals from unnecessarily harsh physical treatment. Four decades later, in 1866, Henry Bergh started the American SPCA. He soon expanded the society's mission and began speaking out against the medical profession for mistreating research animals.

At about the same time, the first organized movements to ban the use of animals in medical research began in England and the United States. Pressure from English anti-vivisectionists led to an 1876 investigation by a royal commission and subsequent passage of the Cruelty to Animals Act. The 1876 act required animal researchers to obtain government licenses for experiments that would involve subjecting vertebrates to pain. American anti-vivisectionists began organizing in the early 1880s in Philadelphia, New York and Boston. American efforts to ban experiments on animals did not succeed, but by the end of the 19th century every state had enacted some form of legislation to protect animals from cruel treatment.

In the years following World War II animal welfare advocates succeeded in stirring up national interest in the welfare of laboratory animals. “There was an enormous resurgence of anti- vivisection activity, mainly by the Hearst newspapers [which] carried National Enquirer-type articles” telling of abuses in laboratories, notes Franklin Loew of the Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine. But interest in the problem waned after a series of “spectacular medical advances,” Loew says, including the development of the polio vaccine, early cancer treatments and the beginnings of heart surgery, all of which had used animal testing.

In 1966, Congress—after a series of contentious debates in both Houses—passed the first (and only) federal law regulating the care and treatment of laboratory animals. The Animal Welfare Act of 1966 set minimum-care standards for animal experimentation. It also required private and federally funded laboratories using animals to register with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and to submit to periodic unannounced inspections. The law was amended in 1970 and 1976 to include standards of care for animals exhibited in zoos, circuses and other types of exhibitions, as well as animals raised in pet shops and transported commercially.

Congress amended the law again in 1985. The amendments strengthened the standards for laboratory animal care, established standards for all aspects of veterinary animal care, required research facilities to set up committees to oversee animal study areas, established a new Department of Agriculture service to provide information to help prevent unintended duplication of animal experiments and required research facilities to provide training for personnel who handle animals.

Animal rights and welfare groups say the USDA took too long (five years) to draw up the regulations needed to implement the 1985 amendments. They also say the agency's enforcement of the law has been spotty at best. Others believe the federal laws have had a strong impact on the biomedical research community. As a result of the legislation, Franklin Loew says, “much greater attention is being paid to the reduction of animal pain and distress, and there is an informal, but growing tendency to attempt to weigh the costs of the research (animal distress and death) against its anticipated benefits (the advance of biomedical practice or knowledge).”

Animal Rights Movement

The federal law and its amendments were passed during a time when a new, much more politically strident and active animal rights movement was evolving. The new movement's philosophy was spelled out in a 1975 book by Australian philosophy Professor Peter Singer, Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals. It dealt with what Singer termed “speciesism,” which he defined as “a prejudice or attitude of bias toward the interest of members of other species.” Singer equated speciesism with other forms of discrimination such as racism and sexism. “If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit non-humans for the same purpose?” he asked.

Singer's book has been compared to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, the 1962 exposé of toxic waste that many people believe was the inspiration for the environmental movement. Franklin Loew says Singer's book gave “an academic patina to what had previously been emotional arguments that legislators could not take seriously. Singer's book changed all that.” The American Medical Association called it “not only a philosophical treatise” but also “a call to action. It provided an intellectual foundation and a moral focus for the animal rights movement.”

On the issue of animal testing in biomedical research, Singer holds a less rigid position than PETA and other militant animal rights groups do. While he is unalterably opposed to inhumane animal tests, Singer says that it “is not necessary to insist that all experiments stop immediately. All that we need to say is that experiments serving no direct and urgent purpose should stop immediately, and in the remaining areas of research, methods involving animals should be replaced as soon as possible by alternative methods not involving animals.”

New Activism

Among the first activists to take up the new animal rights agenda was Henry Spira, a high school English teacher in New York City who had been active in the trade union and civil rights movements. Spira got involved in the animal rights movement after taking a course taught by Singer at New York University's School of Continuing Education in 1974. “Singer made an enormous impression on me because his concern for other animals was rational and defensible in public debate,” Spira later wrote. “It did not depend on sentimentality, on the cuteness of animals.… To me he was saying simply that it is wrong to harm others, and as a matter of consistency we don't limit who the others are; if they can tell the difference between pain and pleasure, then they have the fundamental right not to be harmed.” In 1976 Spira and a group of like-minded New Yorkers chose as their first target a 20-year-long series of cat experiments at New York's well-respected American Museum of Natural History. Researchers there were blinding and deafening cats, and mutilating their sexual organs, to see how the animals' sexual performance was affected. Spira's group first asked the museum to stop the experiments on humanitarian grounds. When museum officials disregarded his request, Spira began a campaign that included picketing, letter writing, telephoning and media advertising to force the experiments to halt. In the face of overwhelming negative publicity, and the loss of donations, the museum scrapped the program in December 1977. This marked the first time an American scientific experiment using animals had been forced to close down because of public pressure.

Spira then successfully lobbied the New York state Legislature to repeal a law permitting researchers to take dogs and cats from public pounds.

In 1979 Spira broadened his agenda into the area of animal testing of cosmetic products. His first target was the widely used Draize eye-irritancy test. Even though the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the cosmetics industry, does not require safety testing, the Draize test has been in wide use since 1944. The test measures eye irritancy in rabbits, which are used because they do not have tear ducts to flush out test materials. One-tenth of a milliliter of a tested substance is placed in one eye of a rabbit. The other eye is left alone for comparison's sake. After several applications, which can last for days, both eyes are checked for irritation. The rabbits are placed in restraining devices because the pain in their infected eyes causes them to try to escape. Sometimes adhesive tape or metal clips are used to hold the eyelids open so the rabbits cannot blink.

Spira brought together a loose coalition of 400 animal protection groups and mounted a broad media-based campaign against the Revlon Co. He pointed out that studies showed that the Draize test was not always accurate in predicting what chemicals would do to humans and that alternatives would be easy to use. A year later Revlon began a wide-scale effort to find alternatives to the Draize test, and other large cosmetics companies followed suit. Today most of the big cosmetics firms—including Revlon, Avon Products, Chesebrough-Pond's Co., Faberge Inc., Mary Kay Cosmetics, Procter & Gamble's Noxell, Amway Corp. and Christian Dior have stopped testing the safety of new products on animals.

Even though Spira's campaign induced a significant number of companies to stop using the Draize test, it still is used in the cosmetics and home products industries. “We've reduced the use of the Draize test by over 70 percent in the last 10 years,” says Mike Petrina, vice president for legislative relations at the Cosmetic, Toiletry, and Fragrance Association. “But we're not at the point now or in the foreseeable future when the Draize test can be eliminated entirely for all our products by all of our companies.”

Founding of Peta

Alex Pacheco, the co-founder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, also was heavily influenced by Peter Singer's book. Pacheco founded an animal rights group at Ohio State University in the mid-1970s. After graduation, he worked with a militant anti-whaling group in Portugal and with the Hunt Saboteurs Association, an English group that disrupts fox hunts. In 1980 Pacheco and Ingrid Newkirk, who was working at a dog pound in the Washington, D.C., area, formed PETA in an effort to bring the active protest tactics of the animal rights movement to the United States.

A year later Pacheco took a job at the Institute for Behavioral Research in Silver Spring, Md. While working there, Pacheco gathered information about the private laboratory's use of 17 monkeys in research experiments. The monkeys were surgically crippled and then studied in an effort to learn more about rehabilitation of humans who suffered strokes or spinal-cord injuries. Pacheco's information led local police to raid the laboratory on Sept. 11, 1981, and to arrest its proprietors. This was the first time police in this country raided a scientific research laboratory because of allegations of cruelty to animals.

Edward Taub, the research scientist who owned and ran the lab, was convicted on six of 17 counts of cruelty to animals. But those convictions were overturned by an appeals court. Nevertheless, the so-called Silver Spring Monkey Case helped catapult PETA into the leadership position of the animal rights movement. PETA was “a militant, media-savvy organization that won battles—and headlines—across the country,” one observer noted. The group “shook up the staid animal welfare movement in much the same way that the militant young students of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee shook up the established civil rights movement in the 1960s.”

Today PETA has a paid staff of more than 100 and an annual budget of some $7 million. It works on a wide range of animal rights issues, including biomedical testing, cosmetics testing, dissection, factory farming, neglect and abuse of animals in pet stores, zoos and circuses; hunting, trapping and the wearing of fur; and promoting vegetarianism and “cruelty-free” (non leather) footwear and other products.

Laboratory Raids

Since 1981 animal rights activists have “raided” at least 76 research facilities around the nation to protest alleged cruel treatment of laboratory animals. These raids have caused millions of dollars in damage and have destroyed records based upon years of research.

Among the most publicized incidents was an April 1989 action by the underground group, Animal Liberation Front, at the University of Arizona in Tucson. More than 1,200 frogs, mice, rabbits and pigs were set free and fires set in laboratories and in an administration building. A raid at Texas Tech University's Health Sciences Center in Lubbock three months later caused more than $50,000 in damage at a sleep-research laboratory and held up a government-sponsored series of tests investigating sudden infant death syndrome. In addition, animal researchers and their families throughout the country have received anonymous threats and many institutions now use armed guards and other security measures against animal rights raids.

PETA and other animal rights groups condemn the violence used by the laboratory raiders. But the animal rights groups do not totally disassociate themselves from the raiders' goals. Regina Gavin, speaking for Trans-Species Unlimited, a Pennsylvania-based animal rights group, said after the University of Arizona raid that her group does not condone violence of any sort. “But we understand the motivation behind it,” she said. “Frankly, I don't shed a tear when I hear a lab has been broken into.”

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Current Situation

New Counter offensive

In the last two years, the American medical and biomedical research establishment, federal health officials and associations representing industries that use animals in research have launched a multimillion-dollar campaign to counter the animal rights movement. The counterattack has included pro-research advertising campaigns, counterdemonstrations against animal-rights protesters, and various public information campaigns including well-publicized and attended press conferences.

Two lobbying groups—Incurably 111 for Animal Research and the Coalition for Animals and Animal Research—have been formed to defend the use of animals in biomedical testing. Another group, the Campaign for Human Health and Safety, was set up by a coalition of personal-care- product companies, medical and scientific organizations and universities to oppose legislation that would restrict animal testing of biomedical and consumer products.

“We must not permit a handful of extremists to deprive millions of the life-sustaining and life- enhancing fruits of biomedical research,” Constance Horner, under secretary of Health and Human Services, said in an October 1989 speech. The doc trine of animal rights “purports to elevate the status of all living things,” she added, but “in the end [it] debases the status of mankind and endangers our essential freedoms.”

The first salvo in the animal rights counteroffensive was fired April 21, 1989, at a press conference in Washington sponsored by a group of federal health officials and research scientists. Louis W. Sullivan, the secretary of Health and Human Services and former dean of the More house School of Medicine in Atlanta, said in a statement that the use of laboratory animals was “crucial” for research on serious health problems such as AIDS and Alzheimer's disease. William J. Bennett, who was then national drug policy director, called animal research an “indispensable part of our work against drug addiction.” Dr. Russell H. Patterson Jr., head of the American Medical Association's council on ethical and judicial affairs, warned that many young scientists and doctors were refusing to undertake needed research “in response to pressure and propaganda from animal activists,” whom he accused of “infiltrating our schools and influencing our children to further their anti-animal research goals.”

The scientific community held another press conference in Washington on June 7, 1990. Secretary Sullivan made headlines that day by calling militant animal rights activists “terrorists” who he said were trying to disrupt valuable scientific research through “intimidation and even violence.” Dr. Michael Jackson, dean of research at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., said animal rights activists “are speaking from an unauthoritative position” because there “is not a creditable investigator who supports” their position on biomedical research.

The AMA, a longtime proponent of the use of animals in biomedical testing, subsequently announced a multimillion-dollar “action plan” to publicize the activities of radical animal rights activists and to “set the record straight” about the benefits of biomedical testing of animals.

“The animal rights people are making a frontal attack on everything for which medicine stands,” said Dr. M. Roy Schwarz, the AMA's senior vice president for medical education and science. “It represents a great threat to biomedical research, and the AMA is trying to sound the alarm.… We want to make it socially acceptable for people to be able to stand up for animal research.”

On April 2, 1991, the AMA launched the first of what it said would be a series of media presentations on the animal rights controversy. It focused on several issues, including the animal rights movement's recent campaign against the dissection of animals in high school and college biology classes. Dr. Daniel H. Johnson, vice Speaker of the AMA's House of Delegates, said at a press conference in Atlanta that the nation was “facing a tremendous anti-intellectual threat from animal extremists.” Johnson was joined by Dr. Jeffery L. Houpt, dean of the Emory University Medical School, Dr. Harrison L. Rogers, an Atlanta surgeon representing the Medical Association of Georgia, and a high school biology teacher who defended the use of laboratory animals in schools.

Frederick Goodwin of the Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Administration has taken a leading role in carrying out the animal rights counterattack. In the last two years Goodwin has helped create a new office for animal research at his agency and at the National Institutes of Health. He also has worked with the U.S. Public Health Service to draw up a plan to counteract animal rights groups. The plan includes employing scientists in favor of animal testing to make speeches at elementary and high schools around the country and other similar educational efforts aimed at teachers, members of Congress and other influential groups. Goodwin says the government and the scientific community had to launch the counterattack to confront “the sleaziness of people who play on the public's lack of understanding.”

Proposed California Law

The animal rights counteroffensive also includes well-financed advertising and lobbying campaigns by the fur industry and by the Cosmetic, Toiletry, and Fragrance Association. “We are in an escalating fight across the country,” said E. Edward Kavanaugh, the association's president. “We are not dealing with rational opponents. We are dealing with zealots who cannot comprehend that a child's life is more important than a dog's.” Among other things, Kavanaugh's association is lobbying against legislation proposed in California and eight other states that would ban certain types of animal testing for cosmetics and household products.

At an April 29, 1991, press conference in Washington organized by the Campaign for Human Health and Safety, a panel of medical experts including Dr. C. Everett Koop, the former U.S. surgeon general, denounced the California bill, which would make it a misdemeanor to use two animal tests—the Draize eye irritancy test and the Skin Irritancy Test—to determine the safety of cosmetics and household cleaning products. “If the California Legislature does not act responsibly and oppose this legislation,” Koop said, “other states might take their cue from California and fall prey to extremist pressures.”

A similar bill was passed last year in both houses of California's Legislature, but it was vetoed by Republican Gov. George Deukmejian. The new bill already has been passed by the California Assembly, but the Senate has yet to take action on it. Senate hearings on the bill are scheduled for later this month. According to the Cosmetics, Toiletry, and Fragrance Association, 12 states have considered anti-Draize test legislation in the last five years, but none have passed any laws. Legislation similar to the proposed California law has been introduced this year in Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Vermont, but none is given much likelihood of being enacted into law.

Activists' Response

Animal rights and animal welfare advocates have reacted strongly to the scientific community's counteroffensive. Henry Spira, for example, says Secretary Sullivan's “terrorist” statement “is rank hypocrisy and total garbage. If there's terrorism, it's taking place in the animal labs.” In an Oct. 4, 1990, letter to Sullivan, Spira said that characterizing animal rights activists as terrorists “is not only unfair” but “counterproductive in resolving an issue of great concern to many millions of Americans.”

Spira believes the animal rights movement should not be judged by those who have raided and destroyed laboratory facilities. They “represent an infinitesimally small fraction of the American public which seeks to promote the well-being of animals in our society,” he says. Sullivan's remarks, Spira adds, “only serve to obscure the reality of what is happening in the animal protection movement,” which he says has had an “overwhelmingly constructive record of positive co-operation with industry, science and the regulatory sector with real benefits to all concerned.”

John Gleiber of the Animal Welfare Institute says statements such as Sullivan's are “name calling without looking at the facts. The animal rights people who have infiltrated laboratories and research facilities have found absolutely appalling conditions. Instead of acting to correct those conditions, in many cases the research community is tossing out what I think is a red herring. Instead of saying, ‘Yes, we will spend our time and energy cleaning up our act,’ they say, ‘No, don't tell us what to do, we know what we're doing.’ If laboratories and research facilities were properly run, there would be no need for the animal rights activists to go into them.”

Colman McCarthy, a syndicated columnist who supports the animal rights cause, maintains that the bio-medical community's counterattack will not succeed because “no philosopher has come forth to refute Peter Singer.” The ethical case “for butchery and torture to animals,” McCarthy wrote last year, “can't be made because none exists.”

Some animal rights activists believe the counterattack could actually help their cause. “I look on their attack as an advantage,” says Regina Gavin of Trans-Species Unlimited, which has been a strong opponent of the American fur industry. “What it does is open up the public dialogue and bring out the issue even more than we could ever do ourselves.” Amy Bertsch of PETA agrees. “Every time the AMA, for example, brings up an idea, it gives us an opportunity to respond,” she says. PETA, in fact, held a press conference in Atlanta immediately following the AMA's April 2 press briefing. At the PETA press conference, Ronald Wiesinger, a Washington, D.C., pediatrician, made a case for not allowing dissection in schools, saying: “We feel children are traumatized needlessly by cutting open dead animals.” Wiesinger's remarks were included in the newspaper accounts of the AMA's press conference.

Franklin Loew of Tufts University Veterinary School believes the scientific community may, in fact, have overreacted in launching the aggressive counteroffensive against the animal rights movement. “I think reasonable people would differ as to whether this [the animal rights movement] represents a true scientific threat to American medicine,” he says. “The question is open.”

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Outlook

Movement's Future Course There's no question that the animal rights movement's confrontational lobbying tactics have helped raise public awareness of the issue and public support for reducing the number of animals used in research and other items of concern to the animal rights movement. The question facing animal rights activists today is whether to continue along the path of confrontation or to adopt a more conciliatory attitude and seek compromises with the research community.

On one end of the scale are those who say they will never compromise. Their goal is to obtain for animals the same rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that humans have. “There would be no animals used for food, no laboratory experiments, no fur coats and no hunting,” says Gary Francione, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School who frequently litigates animal cases.

Most of those involved in animal rights and welfare would not go that far. They want to concentrate their efforts on reducing the number of animals used for biomedical and other types of research. “We never wanted to abolish the use of all animals in research,” says Henry Spira. “But we can all agree we should do all we can to reduce the pain and stress of animals.”

Factory Farms

Spira predicts the next major focus of the animal rights movement will be the nation's large “factory farms.” He says many farm animals are confined and raised in inhumane conditions. For the past two years Spira has been coordinating a campaign to put pressure on Perdue Farms to improve conditions at its chicken farms. He is also working for changes in how veal calves are fed and raised. “An improvement in the lives of 12 percent of farm animals would do more to reduce animal suffering than eliminating all of the testing,” he says.

The main reason for the confinement of chickens, pigs and beef cattle is to increase production of eggs and meat to feed the millions of people who depend on those products for daily sustenance. Farmers say the amount of food they need to produce in order to make a profit means it would be impossible to return to the free-ranging form of stockraising.

Some animal activists have said that the best way to protest the suffering of animals in confinement in factory farms is to stop eating meat and dairy products or by eating products from farms that do not use confinement production techniques. “The society makes a statement that all lives are not equal by eating animals,” Spira says. “It's absurd in that context to think that you can eliminate laboratory tests before doing anything about farm animals.”

Searching for a Middle Ground

The extremist image of some animal rights activists worries the more moderate groups associated with the cause. John Hoyt, president of the Humane Society of the United States, made an effort in a speech he gave last year to distinguish his organization, which he described as being “animal welfarist” and “animal protectionist,” from groups like PETA that are “animal rightists.” Hoyt worries that the extreme animal rights activists are alienating biomedical researchers who might otherwise be willing to cooperate to achieve “reasonable reforms in using animals for testing and research procedures.”

But many animal rights activists continue to believe the best way to effect change is through confrontation. At a large animal rights rally in Washington on June 10, 1990, speakers who advocated moderation and compromise—including actor Christopher Reeve—were loudly jeered. Reeve was booed after he said: “If you want to get things done, the worst thing that can happen to you is to be identified as the fringe.”

It's unclear whether the future of the animal rights movement will be characterized by compromise or confrontation. But whatever course the movement takes, there is no denying the growing acceptance of many of its positions by the American public. This will no doubt be a factor in the ongoing debate between animal rights and welfare groups and the medical and scientific communities.

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Chronology

1800s The first animal welfare groups are founded in England and the United States .

1824 The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) is formed in England; Henry Bergh forms the American SPCA in 1865.

1870 The anti-vivisectionist movement starts in England; the first American anti-vivisectionist society is founded in Philadelphia in 1883.

1876 England enacts the Cruelty to Animals Act, requiring some animal experiments to be licensed by the government.

1960s Congress enacts the Animal Welfare Act of 1966, the first and only federal law regulating the treatment of animals; the law is amended in 1970, 1976 and 1985 . 1970s Beginning of the present-day animal rights movement .

1975 Australian philosophy Professor Peter Singer publishes Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals.

December 1977 American Museum of Natural History in New York terminates a 20- year series of cat experiments after a group of activists led by Henry Spira campaigns for 18 months to close it down on humanitarian grounds.

1980s Animal rights movement adopts new activist strategy .

July 21, 1980 People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is incorporated.

December 1980 Revlon Inc., agrees to contribute $250,000 a year for three years for university research on alternatives to the Draize test, which is widely used on rabbits to test the safety of cosmetics. Revlon's action follows a two-year campaign by a coalition of animal activists.

1981 Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing is formed at the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health in Baltimore. Funded by grants from the cosmetics industry and the federal government, the center becomes the first and largest American organization to promote alternatives to animal testing.

Sept. 11, 1981 Police in Montgomery County, Md., raid a laboratory in Silver Spring, seizing 17 monkeys used in research. This is the first time police have raided a research laboratory because of allegations of animal cruelty. One of the owners is convicted of animal abuse, but the conviction is overturned by an appeals court.

April 2, 1989 Members of the underground Animal Liberation Front break into a laboratory at the University of Arizona in Tucson, setting free more than 1,200 frogs, mice, rabbits and pigs and setting fires in laboratories and an administration building.

April 21, 1989 A group of medical school deans, research scientists, patient advocacy groups and federal health officials holds a press conference in Washington to launch a counterattack against the campaign against the use of animals in research.

1990s Scientific counterattack against the animal rights movement accelerates .

June 7, 1990 Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis W. Sullivan calls animal rights activists who raid research laboratories “terrorists.”

April 2, 1991 The American Medical Association launches the first of what it says will be a series of media presentations on the animal rights controversy. Several issues are addressed, including the animal rights movement's campaign against the dissection of animals in high school and college biology classes.

April 29, 1991 Former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop attacks a proposed California law that would ban two animal tests used to test the safety of cosmetics and household products.

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Short Features

Controversy Over Dissection

For decades, millions of high school students have undergone the hands-on rite of passage of dissecting frogs, fetal pigs and other animals in biology classes. Many students willingly take to the task of using animal cadavers to study anatomy. Others are repelled by the thought of cutting open dead animals and do so only with extreme reluctance.

Jenifer Graham of Victoryville, Calif., fell in the latter category. Citing her “strong moral belief” against killing animals, Ms. Graham declined to participate four years ago in her high school biology class' frog dissection project. She then sued for the right to choose an alternative to dissection. Jenifer Graham won her suit, and her case became the basis for a California law that permits students to refuse to dissect lab animals without penalty. Similar laws have been enacted in Florida, Maine and New York. On the local level, scores of secondary schools now either offer alternatives to dissection or ban the practice altogether.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the nation's most active animal rights group, recently began a nationwide campaign to do away with high school dissection, which, the group estimates, uses some 6 million frogs, rats, mice, cats, fetal pigs, rabbits, dogs, fish and worms annually. The main reasons for PETA's anti-dissection campaign are what the group claims are inhumane procedures used by some companies that provide animals to schools and the ready availability of alternatives, such as videodisks and computer simulations that provide lifelike anatomy lessons without using dead animals.

“We don't think [exempting students from dissection] is enough at this point, and finding a decent alternative is not that difficult,” Sue Brebner, PETA's education director, told the newspaper Education Week. “If the schools are very resistant to [change] then we are recommending legal action.”

The new challenge to dissection has spawned a backlash in some parts of the science and medical communities. The American Medical Association (AMA), for example, began a campaign in April to help continue dissection in high school biology classes. “Science education is under attack,” Dr. Daniel H. Johnson Jr., vice speaker of the AMA's House of Delegates, said at an April 2 press conference in Atlanta. “We are outraged that young, impressionable children are being used like pawns against the same science that has led to their immunization, dental care and general well- being.”

Others argue that alternatives, no matter how realistic, cannot replace the benefits of dissecting a dead being. Dissection “gives an appreciation that these organisms were once living organisms and, if anything, it ought to help [students] understand that there ought to be humane treatment of animals,” said William Andrews, a science-education specialist with the California Department of Education. “When you see that on a two-dimensional video screen, you don't get any sense of that at all.”

[1] Peter West, “Campaign Opens New Front in Battle Over Dissection,” Education Week, Feb. 20, 1991.

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Attacking the Fur Industry

The use of animals in biomedical experiments has taken center stage in the animal rights movement. But animal rights and animal welfare activists also have been very active in recent years in the areas of animal trapping and the use of fur. Led by groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Trans-Species Unlimited and In Defense of Animals, animal advocates have picketed stores selling furs, started consumer boycotts of fur retailers and lobbied designers to stop using animal fur in their products. Other, more zealous anti-fur activists have vandalized retailers' stores by breaking windows and splashing red paint (to symbolize blood) on fur coats.

Animal rights activists oppose fur because they say it represents unethical cruelty to foxes, raccoons, lynx and other wild animals that are trapped in steel-jaw leg hold traps. They also are protesting what they say are the inhumane conditions used in the raising of minks, foxes and other animals for fur. “The millions of animals killed for their fur each year suffer tremendous pain,” A PETA publication states. “Steel-jaw traps cripple and kill animals of all kinds, including cats and dogs. ‘Ranched’ animals are kept in crowded, filthy cages, and some are even skinned alive. When you wear fur, you promote cruelty.”

There is evidence that the fur industry has been hurt by the anti-fur activists. Two large firms, Antonivich Inc., and Furrari Inc., have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy within the last year, and industry analysts estimate that revenue from furs dropped from $1.85 billion in 1986 to about $1.3 billion in 1990.

Some retailers—including Sears, Hudson's Bay, Spiegel and Land's End—have stopped selling fur products, and some of the best known fashion designers—including Bill Blass, Giorgio Armani, Oleg Cassini and Carolina Herrera—have stopped designing fur coats and clothing with fur trim. Sales of synthetic, “fake fur” coats have increased markedly in the last three years.

The fur industry has mounted a campaign of its own to counteract the animal rights protests. The Fur Information Council of America, for example, last year began a $2 million anti-animal rights advertising campaign created by the large public relations firm of Burson-Marsteller. Industry spokesmen say the animals raised for fur are kept in humane conditions and killed painlessly with gas. Animals trapped in the wild, they say, suffer fates, that are little different from those that await other animals in nature. “The animal rights people think Mother Nature is humane,” Tom Riley, vice president of the Fur Retailers Information Council, told The New York Times. “They have no conception of animals in the wild. Animals don't die of old age. They starve. They are torn apart by predators.”

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Who's Who in Animal Rights and Animal Welfare

There are at least 75 non-profit groups working for animal rights and animal welfare in this country. The groups' agendas vary. Some have multimillion-dollar budgets, large staffs and work on a wide range of issues. Others have little funding, skeleton work forces and focus on one or two issues. What follows is a list of some of the nation's most active and influential groups. American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). Formed in 1866 as an American cousin to the English SPCA, this New York-based group is the nation's oldest animal welfare group. The ASPCA runs a variety of services to combat pet overpopulation, including animal shelters, adoption centers, spay-neuter clinics and rescue ambulances. The group also lobbies to pass and enforce laws against cruelty to animals. In recent years the ASPCA has worked to ban the Draize test, which is widely used in the cosmetics industry, to pass laws against the steel-jaw leghold trap, to regulate factory farming, to eliminate the hot-iron face brand and to abolish military wound testing on animals.

Animal Liberation Front (ALF). An underground organization, the ALF is an offshoot of a similar group active since the late 1970s in England. Beginning in 1984 at the University of Pennsylvania's head-injury laboratory, the group has claimed responsibility for conducting raids on more than 70 animal research facilities. Animal researchers consider the group a “terrorist” organization, because during some ALF raids research equipment has been destroyed and animals used in experiments have been set free.

Animal Welfare Institute. Founded in 1951 to promote the humane treatment of animals, this Washington, D.C.-based group, which is affiliated with the Society for Animal Protective Legislation, is active on many fronts, including the issues of fur trapping, endangered species, factory farming and laboratory animal testing. It presents the Albert Schweitzer Medal every year for contributions to animal welfare.

Fund for Animals. Headed by noted author and animal rights advocate Cleveland Amory, this New York-based group was founded in 1967 and works to protect wildlife and fight cruelty to animals on many fronts—from greyhound racing to testing of laboratory animals. The group operates shelters for abused horses, dogs, cats and small feral animals in Texas and California.

Humane Farming Association (HFA). Founded in San Francisco in 1984, the HFA works to counter inhumane farming practices, such as factory farming, genetic engineering and slaughterhouse conditions. The association currently is running a nationwide “consumer advisory” urging federal government action against the dangers of drugs fed to calves that are used to produce veal.

Humane Society of the United States. This large national group was founded in 1954 and works on a broad range of animal welfare issues, including the promotion of responsible pet care. The society also works to expose and eliminate painful and unnecessary animal laboratory testing. Based in Washington, D.C., the Human Society also works with local humane society groups across the country on a wide range of animal welfare issues, including animal shelters.

National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS). One of the nation's oldest animal rights groups, the Chicago-based NAVS has been fighting animal testing since it was founded in 1929. The group opposes all types of experiments on living animals and helps sponsor research on alternatives to animal testing.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Formed in 1981, this Washington, D.C.- based group now has more than 350,000 members and is the most active animal rights group in the nation. PETA is an activist organization whose official slogan is: “Animals are not ours to eat, wear or experiment on.” PETA makes widespread use of legal action, “undercover” investigations, demonstrations, media campaigns and celebrity testimonials. Its agenda includes campaigns against biomedical and cosmetic animal testing, factory farming, hunting, the fur industry and high school dissection. PETA is affiliated with the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine.

Trans-Species Unlimited (TSU). This Williamsport, Pa.-based animal rights group works on a broad range of animal issues, and has concentrated recently on its Campaign for a Fur Free America. The group, which was founded in 1981, also lobbies for laws to ban the shooting of live birds and to end the use of animals in drug addiction laboratory experiments. TSU is closely affiliated with Humans Against Rabbit Exploitation, an international coalition that works against commercial exploitation of rabbit meat and fur.

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Celebrities for Animal Rights

One of the tactics the animal rights movement has used to publicize its concerns is to get testimonials from actors, musicians, fashion models and other celebrities. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has been in the forefront of enlisting celebrity support for animal rights.

The country music singer/songwriter k. d. lang is an outspoken proponent of the vegetarian diet. Last year lang made a series of television ads for PETA. “If you knew how meat was made, you'd probably lose your lunch,” lang says in one ad. “I know—I'm from cattle country. That's why I became a vegetarian.” The campaign resulted in boycotts from some radio stations in heavy meat- producing areas of the Midwest, but it also increased sales of lang's records elsewhere in the country.

The Go-Go's, an all-female rock group, went on a PETA-sponsored anti-fur promotion tour in 1990. The tour's slogan was “We'd Rather Go-Go Naked Than Wear Fur!” Go-Go's singer Belinda Carlisle also was active in a campaign to boycott cosmetics companies that test their products on animals.

Comedian Kevin Nealon of the “Saturday Night Live” television show participated in a demonstration in January 1990 outside the New York headquarters of L'Oreal protesting that cosmetics company's use of animal testing. Later that year actors Phil Hartman, River Phoenix and Mink Stole, and rock stars Howard Jones, Julie Brown and The B-52s lent their names to the Ľ Oreal protest.

Actress Sabrina LeBeauf, best known for her role as Sondra on NBC-TV's “Cosby Show,” volunteers as a spokeswoman for PETA's Shopping Guide for Caring Consumers, which lists the cosmetics companies that do not use animal product testing. Actress Candice Bergen, the star of CBS-TV's “Murphy Brown,” supports the anti-fur campaign sponsored by the Humane Society of the United States. She will wear a fur coat in front of the cameras, Bergen says, only “to make the statement that a character is dim-witted… self-absorbed… and unenlightened.”

Award-winning novelist Alice Walker is a member of PETA and is quoted in the spring 1991 issue of PETA News as saying, “I had forgotten the depth of feeling one could see in horses' eyes.”

A group of rock musicians—Belinda Carlisle, The B-52's, Chrissie Hynde, k. d. lang, Indigo Girls with Michael Stipe of R.E.M., Jane Wiedlin, Howard Jones, Raw Youth, Fetchin Bones, The Goosebumps, Exene Cervenka, Aleka's Attic with River Phoenix, Lene Lovich, Erasure and Nina Hagen—put together a benefit record album for PETA, titled “Tame Yourself.” It was released in March featuring 14 original animal-oriented songs.

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Ethical Vegetarians

Abstaining from eating meat and other animal products such as eggs, milk, butter and cheese is an integral part of today's animal rights movement. “Becoming a vegetarian,” Peter Singer wrote in his 1975 book, Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals, “is the most practical and effective step one can take toward ending both the killing of nonhuman animals and the infliction of suffering upon them.”

A pamphlet published by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) states the message more starkly: “You can improve your health and help end the slaughter of 6 billion animals a year,” PETA says, “by refusing to purchase meat and other animal products.”

The modern-day arguments against eating meat have long historical roots. Numerous philosophers, reformers, writers and poets from ancient times—including Plato, Plutarch, Ovid, Pythagoras, Buddha, Leonardo da Vinci, John Jacques Rousseau, Francois Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Henry David Thoreau, Franz Kafka, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Leo Tolstoy, Albert Einstein, Richard Wagner, George Bernard Shaw, Albert Schweizter and I. B. Singer —extolled the vegetarian diet on ethical grounds. Gandhi, the renowned Indian philosopher and pacifist, considered the idea of abstaining from eating meat an integral part of his overall philosophy of “reverence for life.”

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Bibliography

Books

Langley, Bill, ed., Animal Experimentation: The Consensus Changes, Chapman & Hall, 1990.

Langley, a British animal rights activist, has complied a series of papers by philosophers, researchers, veterinarians and government officials that make a case that most animal experiments provide little scientific knowledge. These scholarly essays do not condemn all animal experiments, but argue instead that a large majority of them could be performed using alternative resources.

Singer, Peter, Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals, New York Review Books, 1975.

Singer, professor of philosophy and director of the Centre for Human Bioethics at Monash University in Australia, is widely credited with providing the philosophical basis for the modern-day animal rights movement. He characterizes the abuse of animals in medical and cosmetics testing and on factory farms as a form of unethical, institutionalized discrimination that he calls “speciesism.” Singer argues that it is “wrong to inflict needless suffering on another being, even if that being were not a member of our species.”

Sperling, Susan, Animal Liberators: Research and Morality, University of California Press, 1989.

Based on interviews with animal rights activists as well as more traditional research, Sperling, an anthropologist, focuses her look at the animal rights movement on the anti-vivisection aspect. She concludes that the animal rights movement is based more on emotion than on reason or scientific knowledge. Sperling sees the animal rights movement as “a vehicle for charismatic emotional expressions of alienation” from present-day society's values.

Articles

Carlson, Peter, “The Great Silver Spring Monkey Debate,” The Washington Post Magazine, Feb. 24, 1991. Carlson reports in detail on the 1981 case that helped launch People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the current animal rights movement. The Silver Spring monkey case—in which police for the first time raided a scientific research laboratory because of alleged cruelty to animals—still has not been totally resolved.

Conniff, Richard, “Fuzzy-Wuzzy Thinking,” Audubon, November 1990.

Environmentalist Conniff argues that the animal rights movement is motivated by naive, sentimental thinking in its militant anti-fur stand. He contends that humans by nature always have killed and eaten animals and worn their skins. Current laws regulating hunting and trapping, he says, generally “protect animals from needless human cruelty and overharvesting.”

Erickson, Deborah, “Blood Feud,” Scientific American, June 1990.

Erickson reports on the recent “scientific backlash” against the animal rights movement's protests against using animals in biomedical research. Erickson summarizes the positions of the animal rights groups and the bio-medical researchers on both sides of the issue—both of which “are playing the same game. It's called the politics of compassion.”

Wright, Robert, “Are Animals People Too?” The New Republic, March 12, 1990.

Wright examines the moral and philosophical arguments of the animal rights movement. He sketches the progress made in recent years by animal rights activists and concludes that moral progress has been made, but that being totally against animal use in scientific experiments, such as those using primates in AIDS research, goes too far.

Zak, Steven, “Ethics and Animals,” The Atlantic, March 1989.

Animal rights activist Zak charts the history of the animal rights movement, focusing on its philosophical underpinnings. He also explains the history of animal rights legislation and examines the use of animals in biomedical experiments. Zak concludes that the large number of animal welfare laws have failed to protect animals from abuse and that fact means “the animal rights movement will by definition be radical.”

Reports and Studies

Committee on the Use of Animals in Research, Science, Medicine, and Animals, National Academy Press, 1991.

This report was prepared for the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. It concludes that “it makes no sense to sacrifice future human health and well-being by not using animals in research today. In fact, it would be immoral and selfish not to use animals in research today, given the harm that could accrue to future generations if such research were halted.”

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The Next Step

Addresses & Essays

Adler, J. and Hager, M., “Emptying the cages,” Newsweek, May 23, 1988, p. 59.

Today animal rights is one of the fastest-growing causes in America, and it seeks to change the principles that have governed relations among the species since time began. Activists are quick to seize on evidence of animal intelligence, while the research establishment says new rules are killing it and will negatively affect human life. Controversy; Strength of movement.

Colard, S. B. III, “Refocusing animal rights,” Humanist, July/August 1990, p. 10.

Examines the animal rights controversy from an environmentalist perspective. Conflicts with animal rights activists over medical research and other issues; Misdirection of the animal rights movement; Harm caused to animals by destruction of habitat.

Cole, J. R., “Animal rights and wrongs,” Humanist, July/August 1990, p. 12.

Analyzes arguments about animal rights, focusing on animal experimentation. Argues that animal rights activists should stop treating complex issues with militant oversimplification.

Elshtain, J. B, “Why worry about the animals?” Progressive, March 1990, p. 18.

Examines the growing awareness of animal abuse that has built an increasingly militant animal- welfare movement in this country and abroad. Key targets of the movement, including animal research, factory farms, military use, household product testing; The fur industry and hunters and trappers; Brief history of the movement. INSETS: Behind the laboratory door, by P. H. Bresnick; Making mythical monsters (genetic engineering), by K. Hart.

Freese, B., “A chat with animal rightists,” Successful Farming, October 1990, p. 20.

Presents highlights of a dialogue between four animal rightists and Successful Farming magazine. Defining animal rights; Response to farmers who feel threatened by the animal rights lobby; Major goals.

Karpati, R., “A scientist: ‘I am the enemy.’” Newsweek, Dec. 18, 1989, p. 12.

Opinion. Recounts the author's efforts to help children afflicted with medical problems or diseases by performing research on animals. The need for animal rights activists to step back and realize the benefits of medical research.

Wiley, J. P. Jr., “Phenomena, comment and notes,” Smithsonian, June 1990, p. 24.

Discusses how halting the killing of dolphins in tuna fishing may signal a new era in how humans treat animals. Human response to characteristics of dolphins; History of movement to protect dolphins; Trends in treatment of animals.

Williamson, L., “Wildlife mismanagement,” Outdoor Life, November 1989, p. 29.

Opinion. Discusses how animal rights activists, cloaked in ignorance and spurred by emotion, have wasted a lot of money and generally ignored biologists' warnings about various animals. Specifics of goat problem on San Clemente Island, Calif.

Animals as food

McMillan, K. A., “The war we face,” Farm Journal, January 1990, p. F-2.

Recounts a protest at the Washington office of the USDA, by animal rights activists, who claim animals raised on United States factory farms are abused and destroyed. INSET: Animal activism doesn't just fill a Saturday afternoon.

O'Neill, M., “What to put in the pot: Cooks face challenge over animal rights,” The New York Times, Aug. 8, 1990, p. C1.

Comments on the growing sentiment against eating meat. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals' stand against raising animals for the table; Nutritional studies undermining the rationale that humans require a meat-based diet to be healthy.

Case studies

Anderson, A., “‘Valuable data’ claim,” Nature, Feb. 15, 1990, p. 581.

Reports on the intensified controversy over the fate of monkeys at the Silver Spring-based Institute for Behavioral Research after an experiment on one monkey yielded surprising and important results. Background of the controversy; Preliminary account of the experiment; Opposition from animal rights activists.

Dean, T., “A call for an eggless Easter,” Christian Century, April 11, 1990, p. 358.

Opinion. Suggests forgoing eggs for Easter in protest of the poultry industry's treatment of chickens. Sources of egg images; How chicks are treated; Longevity of free vs. egg-laying chickens.

Driscoll, L. M., “A corporate spy story,” New England Business, May 1989, p. 28.

Describes the controversy surrounding the alleged attempt on the life of Leon C. Hirsch, 61, chairman of United States Surgical Corp. of Norwalk, Conn., by animal rights activist Fran Stephanie Trutt, who was protesting U.S. Surgical's use of dogs in research and surgical training. Evidence reveals U.S. Surgical's infiltration of the animal rights movement; Instigation of murder in order to discredit movement; Background of U.S. Surgical, maker of surgical staples; Highlights of case.

Feder, B. J., “Pressuring Perdue,” The New York Times Magazine, Nov. 26, 1989, p. 32.

Examines animal rights activist Henry Spira's challenge that Frank Perdue, the nation's most famous chicken farmer, has grossly misrepresented the conditions under which Perdue chickens are raised and slaughtered. Plans for consumer boycott; Background on animal rights; Campaigns against other companies.

Graham, F. Jr., “Avian riffraff,” Audubon, January 1990, p. 8.

Discusses the cruelty to animals charges brought against some Walt Disney World employees who used violent actions to rid the park's Discovery Island (Orlando, Fla.) of vultures, hawks and other birds. Gives reactions of the Disney organization and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.

Holden, C., “Animals rights activism threatens dissection,” Science, Nov. 9, 1990, p. 751.

Reports on videotapes made by members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) allegedly showing cruelty to cats and rats at two suppliers of preserved animals, Carolina Biological Supply Co. and Ward's Biological Supply Co., both in Burlington, N.C. Dissention against the practice of dissecting dead animals, usually by high school biology students, is also discussed. Alternatives to dissection at universities and veterinary schools.

Holden, C., “Monkey euthanasia stalled by activists,” Science, June 23, 1989, p. 1437.

Describes the legal controversy surrounding three monkeys seized from an animal researcher who was charged with cruelty several years ago. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), an animal rights activist group, wants the monkeys rehabilitated, but the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is caring for the monkeys, says euthanasia is recommended.

Mangan, K. S., “Universities beef up security at laboratories to protect researchers threatened by animal rights.…” The Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept. 19, 1990, p. A16. Discusses some of the 3,700 incidents of “harassment,” which have led to $3 million in extra costs for universities after scientists have received floods of hate mail and fake bombs have been found near the homes and laboratories of researchers. Thirteen beagles stolen; Resentment at having to work with security guards and video cameras; Educating the public about animal research; Animal Liberation Front targeting individual researchers.

Norman, C., “Cat study halted amid protests,” Science, Nov. 18, 1988, p. 1001.

Cornell University has terminated a research project involving cats and barbiturate addiction that had been targeted by animal rights groups. Biomedical researchers are worried that this will set a dangerous precedent.

Debates & issues

“Escalation of animal rights -war,” Nature, June 21, 1990, p. 647.

Opinion. Comments on the violent methods used by some animal rights organizations in Britain. Research community must act to defend itself; Network of activists are guilty of exaggeration.

Bishop, K., “From shop to lab to farm, animal rights battle is felt,” The New York Times, Jan. 14,1989, p. 1.

Increasingly militant animal rights groups are targeting fur shops, laboratories, and livestock farms with their protests. Ranging from magazine advertisements to fire-bombing, the tactics of these groups are proving both effective and worrisome. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has declared one group, the Animal Liberation Front, to be a terrorist organization.

Groller, I., “Do animals have rights?” Parents, May 1990, p. 33.

Presents the results of a Parents poll on animal rights, which shows an overwhelming majority of Americans believe animals do have rights and should be protected. Questions and response rates.

Hitt, J., Caplan, A., et al, “Just like us?” Harper's Magazine, August 1988, p. 43.

Forum sponsored by Harper's concerning current issues in the relationship of man to animals. The politics of the issues; New and vociferous animal advocate groups; Philosophical questions of animal and human rights; Verbatim conversation of views of two leading animal rights activists, a philosopher and a constitutional scholar.

Marwick, C., “Additional voices heard in support of humane animal use in research,” Journal of the American Medical Association, June 6, 1990, p. 2863.

Describes the plan by scientists and the medical community to counteract the growing incidence of vandalism of research laboratories by animal rights activists. Calls for legal action; Government support; Pending congressional bills.

Newman, A., “Research versus animal rights: Is there a middle ground?” American Scientist, March/ April 1989, p. 135.

Presents the ongoing debate between scientists using animals in research and animal rights activists. Federal regulations of animal treatment; Victories for animal rights; Search for alternatives; Researchers squeezed financially.

Ryan, R., “Animal activists antagonize allies,” Utne Reader, September/October 1989, p. 50.

Opinion. Argues that the tactics of the animal rights groups are inept or dishonest and that the movement's implicit agenda reaches far beyond the explicit concerns of use of animals for medical research and product testing. Class-based war on fur; Allies of the animal rights movement; Relationship to the environmental movement.

Fur industry

Hochswender, W., “As image of fur suffers, so do revenues,” The New York Times, March 14, 1989, p. A1.

Notes the problems the fur industry is encountering as a result of diminished popularity and increased animal rights activism. The industry had just ended its second year of flat sales revenue.

Kantor, M., “Fur flies in pelt dispute,” Sierra, July/ August 1988, p. 25.

Animal rights activists are campaigning against the Canadian fur industry and the 100,000 trappers dependent on furs for a living. Over half the trappers are aboriginal people who blame trapping bans for desolate living conditions. Activists' plans; Trappers' income, numbers, and opposition; Examples; Animals involved and their populations.

Kasindorf, J., “The fur flies,” New York, Jan. 15, 1990, p. 26.

Reports on the cold war over animal rights and the fight against fur coats being waged by activists who are picketing furriers and confronting fur-clad New Yorkers. Public relations and advertising campaigns launched by furriers; Celebrities against wearing fur; Raising and trapping of fur-bearing animals. INSET: Whose life is it, anyway? (animal rights movement), by J. Rosenberger.

Moral & religious aspects Feder, K. L. and Park, M. A., “Animal rights,” Humanist, July/August 1990, p. 5.

Examines the issues of the animal rights controversy, focusing on a new view of life provided by modern evolutionary biology.” Argues that humankind must no longer grant itself rights that it denies to its fellow animal species.

Stafford, T., “Animal lib,” Christianity Today, June 18, 1990, p. 18.

Discusses the animal rights movement in the light of Christian theology. Speciesism; Social movement with an explicitly non-Christian perspective; Lack of religious grounds to make decisions.

Wall, J. M., “An uncaged vision of nonhuman creation,” Christian Century, Oct. 25, 1989, p. 947.

Editorial. Examines the views of Anglican priest and animal rights activist Andres Linzey. Theological basis for animal rights, based in the thought of Karl Earth; Similarities with liberation theology; Inseparability of concern for animals and Christianity.

Organizations

Hubbell, J. G., “The ‘animal rights’ war on medicine,” Reader's Digest, June 1990, p. 70.

Describes how the American animal rights movement, spearheaded by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), has been sabotaging medical research efforts. Covers some of the movement's “liberation activities” and their devastating results.

Sager, M., “Inhuman bondage,” Rolling Stone, March 24, 1988, p. 86.

Gives an account of a raid at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal Parasitology Institute in Beltsville, Md., by a group of animal rights activists called the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). ALF is an underground organization that advocates radical animal rights.

Underwood, N., Quinn, H., et al., “A burdensome battle,” Maclean's, July 30, 1990, p. 39.

Discusses the growth of the animal rights movement in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Manitoba Animal Rights Coalition's protests at the Manitoba Stampede; Two functions in the movement; Use of animals in products testing and in medical research; Other examples.

Regulations

Aldhous, P., “Lax enforcement of animal rules alleged,” Nature, May 17, 1990, p. 190.

Reports that allegations of animal abuse by a senior scientist at the UK Medical Research Council's National Institute for Medical Research in London have caused questions on the enforcement of Britain's rules on animal experimentation. Evidence; Accusations over the 1986 Animals Act; Inquiry under way; Wilhelm Feldberg and John Stean accused.

Eftink, B., “Animal rights groups win 1, lose 2 in 1988,” Successful Farming, February 1989, p. 15.

Reports that House bill HR 2859, which would have set standards for the raising of veal-calves, died in committee. Massachusetts referendum seeking elimination of confinement livestock practices; Farm animal laws in Sweden.

Meyers, C., “U.S. eases proposed regulations on care of laboratory animals; Researchers are relieved, but.…” The Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept. 5, 1990, p. A20.

Reports that the Department of Agriculture is taking public comments (until Oct. 1) on new proposals to significantly loosen regulations on the care of dogs, cats, and primates used in biomedical research. Not as financially burdensome; Sharp criticism from animal-welfare advocates.

Shulman, S., “Municipal law on its way,” Nature, April 13, 1989, p. 534.

Reports on the attempts in Cambridge, Mass., to pass the first local ordinance in the U.S. to provide municipal control over the care and treatment of laboratory animals. Disagreements over adequacy of existing regulations; No animal abuse found; City officials under pressure.

Research animals

Bierman, K., “Why animal experimentation should continue,” Humanist, July/August 1990, p. 8.

Discusses the use of animal subjects in scientific research. Argues that for the foreseeable future, scientific progress, including cures for AIDS and cystic fibrosis, will require using animals in experimental research.

Breo, D. L., “Animal rights vs research? A question of the nation's scientific literacy,” Journal of the American Medical Association, Nov. 21, 1990, p. 2564.

Presents a perspective on the controversy between animal rights activists and biomedical researchers. Historical aspects of the discovery of penicillin; Intimidation of animal researcher Abdool Moossa; Views of. the American Medical Association (AMA); Veterinarians caught in the middle of the controversy. Holden, C., “A preemptive strike for animal research,” Science, April 28, 1989, p. 415.

Discusses moves that have been made by universities and scientific organizations to counteract the negative publicity animal rights activists have drawn to animal research.

Hughes, J., “Reigning cats and dogs,” National Review, July 23, 1990, p. 35.

Addresses ongoing conflict between animal rights activists and labs that conduct biomedical research using animals. How the animal rights lobby has managed to make significant gains through the efforts of such groups as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA); Stepped- up response of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (PMA), the Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Association (ADAMHA) and other affected groups; Analysis of the growing anti- science movement.

Jaschik, S., “2 court cases focus on activists' efforts to halt animal research,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, Dec. 5, 1990, p. A21.

Details two court cases, one before the U.S. Supreme Court and the other before the Oregon Supreme Court, concerning animal rights and the National Institutes of Health. The “Silver Spring Monkeys” case moved from the Louisiana state court to federal court, where animal rights groups were denied standing. Oregon case concerning the blocking of research on barn owls' response to sound.

McCourt, R., “Model patients,” Discover, August 1990, p. 36.

Discusses the importance of specific animals for biomedical research. Watanabe rabbits and cholesterol; Armadillos and leprosy; Monkfish and diabetes; Axolotls and heart attack damage; Woodchucks and liver cancer.

McGill, D. C., “Cosmetics companies quietly ending animal tests,” The New York Times, Aug. 2, 1989, p. Al.

Reports that several leading cosmetics companies have stopped testing products on animals as confidence in reliability of alternative testing methods increases. Companies names; Reactions of animal rights groups; Accompanying costs of switching to non-animal tests.

Siegel, S. and Swanlund, G., “Animal research is unnecessary and dangerous to human health,” Utne Reader, September/October 1989, p. 47.

Opinion. Argues that animal research is a moral abomination that will come to be viewed as one of the foulest events in human history. Historical context of animal research; Reason the animal model method of inquiry is inapplicable to today's health problems; Economics of animal research.

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Footnotes

[1] Newkirk was quoted in “Just Like Us?” Harper's Magazine, August 1988, p. 47.

[2] Science, Medicine, and Animals, National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine, April 1991, p. 27.

[3] Jerod M. Loeb, et al, “Human vs. Animal Rights,” Journal of the American Medical Association, Nov. 17, 1989, p. 2718.

[4] Statistics cited in Alternatives to Animal Use in Research, Testing, and Education, U.S. Office of Technology Assessment, February 1986 and Use of Laboratory Animals in Biomedical and Behavioral Research, National Academy of Sciences, 1988.

[5] PETA Factsheet “Animal Experimentation: Sadistic Scandal,” 1990.

[6] Quoted in Parade magazine, Oct. 9, 1988.

[7] Writing in Food Drug Cosmetic Lair Journal, January 1991, pp. 94–95.

[8] Quoted in the Los Angeles Times, Dec. 3, 1989.

[9] See Advertising Age, Feb. 26, 1990, p. S-2.

[10] PETA Factsheet, “Cosmetic Testing: Toxic and Tragic,” 1990.

[11] Letter to California state Sen. Bill Lockyer dated April 18. 1991. Lockyer is chairman of the California Senate Judiciary Committee.

[12] Johnson & Johnson, “Notice of 1991 Annual Meeting and Proxy Statement,” March 12, 1991, p. 27.

[13] Quoted in Advertising Age, op. cit., p. S-2.

[14] Quoted in Peter Singer, Animal Liberation-. A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals (1975), p. 219.

[15] Writing in Through the Looking Glass: Issues of Psychological Well-Being in Captive Nonhuman Primates (1991), edited by Melinda A. Novak and Andrew J. Petto, p. 14. [16] Singer, op. cit., p. 7.

[17] Loeb et al., op. cit., p. 2717.

[18] Singer, op. cit., p. 34.

[19] Writing in Peter Singer, ed., In Defense of Animals (1985), p. 196.

[20] peter Carlson, writing in The Washington Post Magazine, Feb. 24, 1991.

[21] Quoted in the Los Angeles Times, April 22, 1989.

[22] Quoted in The New Republic, March 12, 1990, p. 23.

[23] Quoted in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Nov. 21, 1990, p. 2565.

[24] Quoted in Scientific American, June 1990, p. 17.

[25] Quoted in the Los Angeles Times, April 12, 1990.

[26] Column published in The Washington Post, June 9, 1990.

[27] Quoted in the Los Angeles Times, April 12, 1990.

[28] Quoted in Harper's Magazine, August 1988, p. 50.

[29] Quoted in The New York Times Magazine, Nov. 26, 1989, p. 73.

[30] Ibid.

[31] March 1990 speech quoted in the Los Angeles Times, April 12, 1990.

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Marc Leepson is a free-lance writer who lives near Washington, D. C.

*Vivisection originally referred to the cutting of a living animal for purposes of experiment or demonstration. Today its meaning has been extended to include all types of experimentation on animals.

*The first piece of anti-cruelty legislation was promulgated in 1641 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It read: “No man shall exercise any Tirranny or Crueltie toward any bruite Creature which are usuallie kept for man's use.” The next American anti-cruelty law was not enacted until 1828 in New York, although some common-law statutes included the crime of cruelty to animals as a public nuisance.

*After the raid, the National Institutes of Health was given legal custody of the 15 surviving monkeys. PETA wanted the monkeys to go to an animal sanctuary in Texas and filed suit to gain custody of them. In June 1986, NIH transferred the monkeys to Tulane University's Delta Regional Primate Research Center near New Orleans. Five of them were later sent to the San Diego Zoo. Four of the monkeys that remained in Louisiana are alive today. PETA's suit to gain control of them has reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which is deciding whether the case should be transferred from federal to state court. Arguments were heard in March and a decision is expected -this year.

*Veal comes from young calves and currently it involves feeding them only liquids, mostly nonfat milk powder and vitamins. The intent is to provide an iron-deficient diet by depriving the calves of roughage and inducing anemia so that the meat will be the light color and tender texture the meat- eating public favors. The calves are confined for their entire 16-week lives in slatted chutes approximately two feet wide and four feet long—and sometimes chained in place so they cannot turn around.

Document APA Citation — See Alternate Citation Style Leepson, M., & Leepson, M. (1991, May 24). Animal rights. CQ Researcher, 1, 301-324. Retrieved from http://library.cqpress.com/

Document ID: cqresrre1991052400 Document URL: http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/cqresrre1991052400

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