BAN ON TESTING OF ANIMALS BY - BHARATH

BAN ON TESTING OF ANIMALS

AUTHORED BY - BHARATH

Abstract:

Animals have been severely used for the testing for the manufacture of cosmetics. This should have to be banned for the protection and welfare of animals. Considering this, the first country in South Asia to ban the animal testing for the purpose of testing for the manufacturing of cosmetics is India. Similarly, they are used for some medical research which have been undertaken by some huge industries other than testing for cosmetics. The reason for why testing of animals should be banned is because it violates the basic rights of animals and as a result of testing, they will suffer from experimental pains and so on. As of now seven states have banned the sale of animal-tested cosmetic products. Those were California, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Nevada, and Virginia. However, India is yet to ban the marketing of animal tested products which have been manufactured in other countries. The pressure to ban animal testing is by the application that has been issued by PETA (People for Ethnical Treatment of Animals). PETA is nothing but the campaign for the welfare of animals. It is a non-profitable organization. As it is an NPO it fought well for the protection, benefit, and welfare of animals by protesting to ban the testing of animals for the uses of humans. PETA also argued and protested the testing of animals and provided some suggestions and other alternatives for the testing of cosmetic products, medical research, or whatsoever. In addition to PETA, there are more non profitable organizations for the welfare of animals such as BlueCross and so on. India has banned several tests on animals between the months of August and December 2012. There have been several acts under which animals and their rights can be protected such as Prevention of Cruelty Act,1960, Draft Animal Welfare Act,2011, The Wildlife Protection Act,1972 and so on.

Keywords: Animal welfare, PETA, The wildlife Protection Act,1972, Non profitable organization, Animal tested products.

INTRODUCTION:

Even though non-animal testing are generally accessible, animal trials for cosmetics and home items persist. Instead of monitoring how long it takes a chemical to burn the cornea of a rabbit's eye, producers may now drop the chemical onto 3D tissue constructs made from human cells that look like the cornea. Human skin cultures may also be produced and bought for evaluating skin irritation. Read more about these and hundreds of other non-animal tests that are quicker and more reliable than animal experiments at predicting human responses to a product. It seems that the NRDC experts have never seen the National Academy of Sciences study "Toxicity Testing in the Twenty-First Century: A Vision and a Strategy" and are disregarding the major shift in our knowledge of biological processes that has happened in the previous quarter-century. These breakthroughs in knowledge have resulted in the creation of test techniques that can look directly at cellular processes rather of the crude and uninformative findings obtained by utilising animals. Currently, millions of mice, rats, rabbits, primates, cats, dogs, and other animals are caged in labs around the nation. They are in agony, are lonely, and want to be free of animal experimentation. All they can do now is sit and wait, terrified of the next terrible and excruciating treatment that will be done on them. Some animals acquire neurotic behaviours as a result of a lack of environmental enrichment and the stress of their living circumstances, such as spinning in circles, rocking back and forth, ripping out their own fur, and even biting themselves. Almost all of them will be slain after living a life of misery, loneliness, and dread. PETA is in the forefront of the fight to end this brutality. Our devoted team of scientists and other staff members work full-time to expose the brutality of animal testing and seek its abolition. This team works with members of Congress to introduce groundbreaking legislation to replace the use of animals in laboratories, leads hard-hitting eyewitness exposés and public campaigns that have shifted public opinion against animal testing, and persuades major corporations, government agencies, and universities to abandon animal tests in favour of modern, non-animal methods. Animal testing may be replaced by technologically sophisticated non-animal test techniques. These tests are not only more humanitarian, but they also have the potential to be less expensive, quicker, and more relevant to people.

While some animal testing is required by law, most of it is not. A number of nations, including the European Union, India, Israel, New Zealand, Norway, and others, have banned the testing of some kinds of consumer products on animals. Every year, more than 100 million animals suffer and die in harsh chemical, medicine, food, and cosmetics testing, as well as medical training exercises and curiosity-driven medical studies at institutions in the United States. Animals also suffer and die in classroom biology experiments and dissections, even though current non-animal testing have been demonstrated again and again to be more instructive, save instructors time, and save schools money. 

Exact figures are unavailable since mice, rats, birds, and cold-blooded animals, which account for more than 99 percent of animals used in research, are not protected by even the most basic provisions of the Animal Welfare Act and hence go uncounted. Animal testing include forcing mice and rats to inhale hazardous gases, force-feeding insecticides to dogs, and injecting corrosive chemicals into the delicate eyes of rabbits. Even though a product is harmful to animals, it may still be sold to people. In contrast, just because a substance has been proved to be safe in animals does not mean it will be safe to use in people. Animals are also utilised in toxicity experiments as part of large regulatory testing projects that are often supported by US taxpayers. Among the government agencies that put animals to harsh, painful testing are the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Toxicology Program, and the United States Department of Agriculture.

Instead of sponsoring potential clinical, in vitro, epidemiological, and other non-animal research that might help people, the federal government and many health organisations spend taxpayers' and well-meaning contributors' money on animal experiments at universities and commercial facilities. PETA is a global leader in striving to assist these creatures and all other sentient beings that are suffering because of speciesism. The mistaken assumption that some animals are deserving of care and compassion while others are not, all based on arbitrary human choices. PETA and its millions of members and supporters across the globe understand that our animal companions are family members—they are unique, feeling people with their own personalities, interests, and needs. That is why we take a holistic approach to assisting animals that are usually victims of the "pet trade," collaborating behind the scenes with businesses and law enforcement to make the world a better place for animals every day.  Animal testing is a touchy subject. Animal rights groups don't like it because they think it's cruel to animals. They say that testing on animals doesn't work and that it should be banned. People who support animal testing, on the other hand, say that testing on animals is necessary for developing and finding new drugs.

Different countries have different ideas about testing on animals. Some countries, like the European Union, Brazil, Canada, and Taiwan, are against animal testing and have banned or are planning to ban it. In China, it is okay to test on animals. In the United States, testing on animals is not against the law. We are worried about whether India should ban drug testing on animals. When it comes to giving poor people good health care and medicines, India is already behind. So, if we look at the U.S. pharmaceutical industry and compare it to India's, animal testing is the reason the U.S. pharmaceutical industry is doing so well. India is a developing country, so it cannot ban testing on animals. There cannot be animal testing without modern rules. We need rules about testing on animals so that animals do not have to go through unnecessary pain, harm, and suffering. People today know more about animal rights and safety, so we cannot stick to the old rules and laws. The three Rs did not work because they didn't fit with what was going on at the time. Any society that wants to move forward should make everything legal under rules. India can make animal testing legal, but only if they make new rules to control experimentation and keep animals from being tested on for no reason. Consider the U.S. as an example. In the U.S., animal testing is governed by the Animal Welfare Act of 1966. We need rules to help us be better to animals.

We cannot stop testing on animals just because it's cruel. We all know that testing on animals has helped us. Without testing on animals, different medicines that save lives could not have been found. For animal testing to be legal in India, we need up-to-date rules. Animal testing is when animals are used as subjects for tests. Tests on animals are done to see how well drugs, products, and medicines work. Before they are tried on people, these products and medicines are tested on animals to see how safe they are and how toxic they are. It is also called animal research or animal testing. After a series of tests on animals, medicines, cosmetics, drugs, and other products can only be tried out on people. We use animal tests to find out if our food, medicines, and other things that we put into the environment are safe. Animal testing is also used in biomedical research and to teach people about health. The effects of chemicals on humans can be well predicted by the results of toxicological tests on lab animals. Scientists think that drugs have different effects on different kinds of animals.

To control for differences between species, all reputable researchers in industry, government, and academia use more than one species to test a substance.

Animal rights activists who are against testing on animals say that the tests are not reliable, cruel, useless, and dangerous. They say that because people are different from animals, these experiments rarely work on people. For example, raisins, grapes, chocolate, nuts, avocados, macadamia nuts, and nuts are safe for people but dangerous for dogs. These people who care about animals have started different campaigns all over the world to stop testing on animals. The main goal of their campaign is to protect animals' rights and keep them from being hurt cruelly or for no reason.

In the case of A. Nagarajan VS Union of India[1], he talks about a sport called "Jallikattu," which is about taming bulls. This sport has been around for hundreds of years, but it is cruel to animals and cannot be explained. In this case, it was decided that animals have a basic right not to be made to hurt themselves. Bulls should not be used in races or bullfights or any other kind of competition. It also said that the Animal Welfare Board and the government must protect the freedoms of animals. This includes the freedom from distress and fear and the freedom to act normally, as well as the freedom from thirst and hunger, discomfort, disease, pain, and injury.

This case shows that animal activists and animal welfare boards will always stand up for animals if they are mistreated or if their basic rights are violated.

On the other hand, people who support animal testing say that it is important to test on animals right now and that we cannot stop it completely. Since at least 500 BC, people have done research on living animals. Then, in the early 1900s, animal testing began in the United States. It is important and useful to know why we began testing on animals. Because of the ingredients in the cosmetic Lash Lure, a woman died from using it. Because of this make-up, women were going blind. People were hurt, and this caused a big fuss. Selling these kinds of products is bad and dangerous. Is beauty worth the chance of dying? This led to the first experiment on an animal. The idea behind doing experiments on animals was that humans and animals have similar bodies, so testing these products on animals will make sure they are safe.

Regulatory agencies and people who support biomedical research all over the world have continued to overestimate how important animal testing is for figuring out how safe something is for the public and underestimate how useful the new technology could be. Animal testing has been overvalued around the world, which has led to campaigns against it in the United States and Europe.

Both Europe and the United States spent millions of dollars on research to find alternatives to testing on animals. Researchers and advocates were not against testing on animals, but they were looking for a new way to do things that didn't involve testing on animals. To find out if a product is dangerous for humans or not, it has to be tested on animals. It is important to do experiments on animals to find out how well these products work on animals.

All over the world, there are many campaigns against animal testing. Around 1975, people who care about animals started campaigns in Europe and the United States to stop cosmetics and toiletries from being tested on animals. One of them is Forever Against Animal Testing (FAAT). "The Body Shop" began this campaign in the year 1989. The main goal of this campaign is to stop testing on animals everywhere. Cruelty Free International says that more than 500,000 animals may be used to test cosmetics around the world every year, even though A preclinical trial is a study done on animals to test a procedure, a drug, or a medical treatment. Pre-clinical studies are a big part of the process of making a new drug, and they show what needs to be done to move the potential molecule forward. Now, preclinical studies are needed and must follow strict rules. Before clinical trials, pre-clinical trials must be done. A pre-clinical trial must go through several steps.

Approval file as a new investigational drug, Find out what doses are harmful and what doses work. Test the drug in the assay; make a bioassay; figure out what the drug is meant to do.

Clinical trials see how well new ways of treating people work on real people. To see how well drugs work, they are put to the test in clinical and pre-clinical trials. If a drug has not been tried out on animals, it can't be tried out on people. The whole point of a pre-clinical trial is to make sure that the treatment is safe for people. There are other ways to test that would not put animals or people through pain. When Bengal Chemical and Pharmaceutical was set up in 1892, it was the first time that a local company made modern medicine. The search for new medicines is an important part of people's lives. India had to buy all its drugs from foreign companies after 1947. The prices for drugs in India were very high. India's patent law is not very strong, so Indian pharmaceutical companies started making cheap copies of foreign pharmaceuticals that were already on the market.

They did this because they did not have to spend the money and time that other foreign pharmaceutical companies did on developing and researching drugs. On the other hand, Indian pharmaceutical companies did not worry about drug developers breaking the law or the costs of going to court over it. "Indian companies-controlled 70 percent of the domestic formulations market and 85 percent of the bulk drugs market" in the 1990s. This meant that foreign pharmaceutical companies no longer had control over India. India makes 8% of the world's pharmaceuticals and is the fifth largest country in terms of production volume, after the US, Japan, Europe, and China. All because India's patent laws are not very strong.

Animal testing led to all of the great discoveries of the past. Animal research has been a part of every Nobel Prize for medical research in the past 100 years. In 1901, the first Nobel Prize in medicine was given for horse research and serum therapy. In 1922, insulin was first taken from dogs, which changed how people with diabetes were treated. In the 1970s, antibiotics and leprosy vaccines were made with the help of armadillos. In 1941, Alexander Fleming used rats to find penicillin. Also, Alexander Fleming won the Nobel Prize in 1945 for coming up with and finding penicillin. Animal testing was also used to find drugs like diphtheria/tetanus antitoxin, prontosil (the first drug for bacterial infections), and streptomycin. To make a case for why animal testing should be legalised in India, we need to know what the laws are about animal testing everywhere else. Here are some of the most important laws around the world about animal testing and whether it is illegal.

Animal testing is not allowed to be tested or sold in the European Union. It makes it illegal to sell products or cosmetics that have been tested on animals. It also makes it illegal to sell products whose ingredients have been tested on animals. Over half a million people will not be able to use products that were tested on animals because of the ban. In 2014, the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo banned animal tests, and now the city is passing a law that will apply to the whole country. Even though the bill has some flaws, they think it is a good step. Animal testing is now against the law in New Zealand. The country's parliament voted unanimously to stop testing cosmetics on animals. The ban is likely to pass its third and final reading and be signed into law. Taiwan and Canada both wanted to make it illegal to do these kinds of tests on animals and to sell products that come from these tests. In the United States, it is not against the law to test on animals. The Animal Welfare Act of 1966 sets rules for animal testing in the U.S. (AWA). The Animal Welfare Act says how animals should be treated and how they should be cared for. In the U.S., pesticides must be tried out on dogs. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires companies that sell fluoride products to swab the teeth of 200 rats with the test substance for two weeks. After that, the animals are killed, and their heads are baked in an oven for an hour. In 2010, almost 1.37 million animals were used in the United States. Birds, mice, rats, and fish are not included in these numbers because they are not covered by the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), USA. Some of these animals are also used in India, but because frogs are on the list of endangered species, the chief wildlife warden must give special permission for them to be used. It is thought that about 300,000 lab animals die every day in the United States. In China Animal Testing is Legal. All cosmetics that are brought into China must be tested on animals. Only in China do products, medicines, and cosmetics must be tested on animals. China is the biggest market for cosmetics. One could say that China's cosmetics market grew because of animal testing. The fact that animal testing is required in China is the reason why the cosmetics market there is so strong. The Drugs and Cosmetics Act of 1940 controls how drugs and cosmetics are sold, made, and brought into India. Its goal is to make sure that the drugs and cosmetics sold in India work well, are safe, and meet quality standards. Under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act of 1960, the Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals (CPCSEA) oversees making sure that animals do not have to go through unnecessary pain and suffering before, during, or after experiments. These acts show that India has laws that help protect animals. In India, it is against the law to test cosmetics on animals, but it is not against the law to test drugs on animals. The ban also covers the things that make up the product. India is the first country in South Asia to ban animal tests. This shows that India does not like testing on animals, and its laws against it are very strict. Animals like the rabbit, sheep, mice, guinea pig, albino rats, monkeys, frogs, primates, etc. are used to test drugs on them. Some people also think that you can't learn about pharmacology without doing tests on animals. So, these animals are important for new medical and pharmaceutical discoveries.

India has one of the worst health care systems in the world. More than 1.6 million Indians die every year because they cannot get to good health care facilities. India needs about 6 lakh doctors and 2 million nurses, but there are not enough of them. People who are poor often cannot afford antibiotics that could save their lives. High out-of-pocket costs for the patient are made worse by the fact that the government does not spend much on health services. In India, 65 percent of health care costs are paid for out of pocket, which puts about 57 million people below the poverty line every year. India has never made a new drug that made it to the market. Developing countries like India, which already do not have enough good and effective health care, need a good lab for pharmaceutical research that can find new vaccines and cheap drugs for the most vulnerable people who have nowhere else to go. But animal testing cannot be used as an excuse for cruelty to animals, which has happened and is a real problem in places like China. For developing countries like India, it is important to use animals for testing in a responsible way. At the same time, animal rights should not be put at risk and should remain the top priority. Advanced economies like the US have not completely banned animal testing, and it's a big part of their pharmaceutical research. This has led to new vaccines and cheaper medicines, which shows how good their health care is.

In the past, India's patent laws were not very good, so Indian pharmaceutical companies copied both foreign pharmaceuticals and other Indian pharmaceutical companies. In the modern world, there is a steady rise in the demand for medicine and cheap drugs, so developing countries like India should not just sit back and do nothing. Because Indian pharmaceutical companies cannot find new drugs and medicines, the prices of drugs are going up steadily. The poor people in the country cannot get drugs and medicines. India already has a lot of problems like this, so it cannot be against the law to test for drugs. In developing countries like India, where health care is not very good, testing on animals is necessary. However, this cannot be a reason to hurt animals. The government should start a few projects and programmes to raise awareness about animals and their pain. People should be taught that they should not hurt or hurtlessly treat animals in any way. There should be more projects and campaigns.

CONCLUSION:

Strong laws are the only way to stop animal testing, so the state should give this matter its utmost attention. In the modern world, we need to find new ways to do things. We can't ignore the need for new rules, and we can't go back to the old ones either. India needs to make it legal to test on animals because it is a developing country. India needs good laboratory pharmaceutical research that can come up with new vaccines and drugs that are affordable for the most vulnerable people in society. Because Indian pharmaceutical companies can't find new medicines and drugs, the prices of drugs keep going up. India should let people test on animals so that medicine prices do not go up. It's important to remember that we can't stop testing on animals just because it's cruel. We all know that testing on animals has helped us. Without testing on animals, different medicines that save lives could not have been found. If we want to argue that animal testing should be legal in India, we need modern rules. Strong laws can only put limits on animal testing, so the State will focus on the most important thing. Indian animal testing can only happen if new laws are passed to properly regulate the study and stop animals from being tested on for no reason.

CITATION:

Animal Welfare Board of India v. People for Elimination of Stray Troubles, (2016) 10 SCC 684

Animal Welfare Board of India v. A. Nagaraja, (2014) 7 SCC 547

Asit Kumar Maji (Dr.) v. West Bengal University of Animal & Fishery Sciences, 2001 SCC OnLine Cal

185

Animal Feed Analytical and Quality Assurance Laboratory, In re, 2019 SCC OnLine TN

AAR-GST 6

J.N. Bora (Dr.) v. Department of Animal Husbandry, 2009 SCC OnLine CIC 13638

J.N. Bora (Dr.) v. Department of Animal Husbandry, 2009 SCC OnLine CIC 13638

Animal Protection Trust v. Union of India, 2010 SCC OnLine Guj 8138

State of Gujarat v. Mirzapur Moti Kureshi Kassab Jamat, (2005) 8 SCC 534

J.N. Bora (Dr.) v. Central Poultry Performance Testing Centre, 2008 SCC OnLine CIC 6643

J.N. Bora (Dr.) v. Central Poultry Performance Testing Centre, 2008 SCC OnLine CIC 6643

[1] A. Nagarajan vs Union of India