Consider what happened in one Oklahoma City classroom as a result of cat dissection in the classroom: “The disturbing footage posted to Facebook shows nine young students from the flagship charter school – which is rated among the best schools in the USA – making the cat corpses ‘dance’ to music in a school laboratory while being ‘conducted’ by another student.”
A few weeks ago, news broke that the U.S. government would retire all 50 chimpanzees it was holding in reserve “in case” of need for them in the future as research subjects. This victory comes as the result of a campaign spanning many years and which would not have been possible without the collaboration, cooperation, and joint advocacy of numerous animal protection groups, both small and large, nationwide.
Instead of contributing to the development of sustainable, healthy farming systems, veterinarians have become servants of the industrial farming machine. Vets no longer see animals as their clients, they see the person who signs their salary check. We need vets to rediscover their original mission – animal welfare. Vets have the power to change the system for good. It’s hard to understand why medical professionals who specialize in treating animals actively contribute to their pain and terror.
The biomedical research community has already agreed in principle that scientific use of animals should be subject to rigorous scientific review… If the practices and regulations… were changed or amended so that scientific use of animals were to be conducted in an improved and strict manner regarding the welfare of animals, we believe that animal advocates would agree not to interfere with such research or specifically object to it through targeted campaigns.
The ethical traveler now needs to take decisions that change the world. To decide where to go for their holidays. And if they decide not to go to a particular state and country, to actually let the travel agency and country know why they are not going.