Animals Deserve
Happiness
When you look into the eyes of an animal,
what do you see? Do you see love and happiness? If not, maybe you see pain,
suffering, fear, sorrow, stress, and loneliness. Whatever you may see as you
gaze into their eyes, the fact that he or she is a living thing and is able to
communicate with you even it is not with words should be obvious. Why is it
that even though animals are clearly thriving amongst us and are completely
capable of transmitting emotions, people fail to acknowledge their rights and
consider them to be much lesser beings? As long as society continues to fail to
acknowledge the fact that animals should never be treated as an experiment, a
quick way to make money, or an addition to their obsessive collection, the
issues of animal abuse remains.
Animal testing is one of the worst
forms of animal abuse there is. Animal testing (or experimentation) is defined
as, “Use of animals in experiments and development projects usually to
determine toxicity, dosing and efficacy of test drugs before proceeding to
human clinical trials.” (biology-online.org). Furthermore, not only is it
extremely cruel, it is also highly impractical. Animals do not share the same
DNA structures as human beings, thus making experimentation on animals
inconclusive. By purchasing various products such as dove, glade, pledge, and Windex
(to name a few), we encourage the manufacturers to continue what they are doing
(making the product and testing it on helpless, innocent animals) so the
consumer buys their merchandise. By purchasing a common household item that we
use to clean or freshen our homes with, we applaud these companies for their
wrongdoings and giving them our seal of approval to go ahead and continue
brutally torturing these poor animals in order to make the product
“successful”. A recent study on the amount of animals being used “in the name
of science” revealed an estimated 50-100 million animals are used annually for experiments.
That is, 50-100 million innocent living organisms are being sacrificed in the
name of “research”. Many of these animals are received from breeders, shelters,
and newspaper advertisements. These innocent animals lives do not have to be
taken, as there are many alternatives when it comes to animal testing. For
example, using the extra skin from a recent human surgical procedure would be a
wonderful alternative. Human skin (along with donated cadavers) would allow
scientists to measure the rate at which a chemical is able to penetrate the
skin. Thus, making the experiment much more practical and accurate. Another
alternative would be the use of technology. Technology is used in numerous
medical procedures/examinations when it came to discovering possible threats to
the human body (such as cancerous cells), so why not use technological
procedures to determine whether or not a product will cause harm to the
consumer? Unfortunately, animal testing will continue to be apart of society
unless people finally decide that they had enough and reject the products from
companies that fail to acknowledge and practice alternatives.
Another form of animal abuse that
needs to be addressed is the use of puppy mills. For those not completely aware
of what exactly a “puppy mill” is, it is defined as “A commercial dog breeding
facility that is operated with an emphasis upon profits above animal welfare
and is often in substandard conditions regarding the well-being of dogs in
their care.” (almosthomerescue.org). In other words, it is a place where
hundreds of innocent dogs are imprisoned and forced to constantly breed. Owners
of the facility acknowledge the fact that millions of people cannot resist the
adorable look of puppies, so they consistently breed dogs in crammed, filthy,
disease filled cages to produce of mass production of these cute fluffy attention
grabbers. What many people fail to realize is that puppies that are found at
many pet stores come from puppy mills, and that somewhere the mother (and
father) of that puppy in the window is suffering from torture and neglect. The
solution for this ongoing problem is to simply adopt. There are millions of
sweet, loving, adorable animals in animal shelters waiting for a second chance
and house to call home. If people are no longer willing to spend a ridiculous
amount of money on a puppy, and search for a new family member at a local
animal shelter instead, owners of puppy mills will soon realize that there is
no longer high demand for their “product” and that they are spending more money
than they are making. Thus, the cruel business would slowly begin to fade, many
more animals would be saved and placed in good homes, and as an added bonus,
animal shelters would not be as overpopulated.
A third branch of animal abuse worth
identifying would be animal hoarding. Although there is no single definition
for animal hoarding due to the fact a certain criteria must be used to be classified
an “animal hoarder”, there are multiple ways to identify if one can actually be
labeled as a hoarder of animals. Some of ways to determine whether or not one
hoards animals are: “The accumulation of a large number of animals that has
overwhelmed ones ability to provide minimal care for their well-being, failure
to acknowledge the deteriorating condition of the animals, and failure to
recognize the negative effect of the collection his or her own health and
well-being and on that of other household members.” (animallaw.info). Most of
the time the owners who hoard animals have good intentions when it comes to
their animals well being, but often become overwhelmed by the amount of animals
they take in. Thus, both the owners and animals have to suffer due to the fact
that the environment quickly become hazardous and unfit for any living organism
to live in. With that being said, the solution to this issue is obvious; don’t
take in more than you can handle. Even though one may really have a passion for
caring for multiple animals at a single giving time and is means well when it
comes to the well-being of their animals, if the owners are unable to provide
the appropriate care and hospitality for the animals, let alone themselves, it
is not the appropriate time to be responsible for multiple lives who solely
depend on them.
Furthermore,
it is evident that animal abuse continues to linger throughout our society and
in order to prevent it from occurring in the future; society needs to make a
stand and be the voice for the animals that truly need our help. Animal abuse
still exists throughout society and is still happening each and every day.
Whether it is identified through animal testing, animal hoarding, or the usage
of puppy mills, the mistreating of innocent animals must come to an end. Although ending the abuse of animals is not a
easy thing to do and will not happen over night, we need to utilize our ability
to get the message out, and ultimately make the world a safer place for animals
by exposing and eliminating the things that hurt them the most.
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