In March 2001, PETA contacted prominent environmental, consumer,
and public health organizations in the United States and asked
for their positions on the massive animal-testing programs
under development by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
We sent each group a cover letter and an issue paper explaining
the animal protection community’s concerns about the
EPA’s approach to chemical-testing.
For example, despite killing hundreds of thousands of animals
in cruel chemical toxicity tests, the EPA has not banned a
single toxic industrial chemical in more than 10 years using
its authority under the Toxic Substances Control Act. The
chemical industry has long approved of the EPA's near-exclusive
reliance on animal tests because their results are easily
manipulated. In addition, required testing means that a company’s
products are safe from regulation for years while the products
are tested and retested on animals. And, after decades of
practice, industry representatives have perfected the art
of arguing both sides of the animal-testing issue.
Here’s how they do it: If a chemical
is shown to cause cancer or other harmful effects in animals,
industry representatives claim that the results aren't applicable
to humans. This is happening right now with the pesticide
atrazine and with chemicals called phthalates (ingredients
in plastic products, including children’s toys). In
each of these cases, companies have argued that cancers that
develop in animals exposed to these chemicals would not occur
in humans—and the arguments have worked. Both these
chemicals remain on the market and in widespread use despite
the fact that thousands of animals have died painful deaths
during EPA-mandated testing.
At the same time, company officials happily display the results
of EPA-required studies that suggest that their chemicals
are not harmful. In these cases, companies laud the predictability
of animal-testing and claim that their products are safe for
humans. This is exactly what happened with cigarettes for
more than 20 years, as industry scientists claimed that tobacco
was safe for humans because animal tests—many of which
involved cutting holes in the throats of dogs and forcing
them to inhale cigarette smoke—did not cause cancer
in animals.
The EPA's addiction to animal testing is so pervasive that
even when evidence from human population studies implicates
a chemical, the results are ignored by the EPA for the sake
of conducting more and more animal studies. For years, population
studies have shown that arsenic in drinking water causes cancer
in humans. Yet the EPA dragged its feet for more than 20 years
while thousands of animals were killed in tests that attempted
to reproduce the effects already seen in humans.
The matter is made worse by the fact that the EPA refuses
to subject animal-based test methods to the same level of
scientific validation—to determine their reliability
and relevance to humans—that all non-animal test methods
must meet before they are accepted and used. The results of
nonvalidated animal tests are scientifically useless as a
basis upon which to regulate dangerous chemicals. So, the
EPA’s animal-testing programs do not protect either
people or the environment, despite causing enormous animal
suffering. Yet some environmental groups continue to call
for ever-more animal-testing and defend every animal test,
no matter how cruel or irrelevant.
After outlining the futility of relying on nonvalidated animal
tests to regulate dangerous chemicals, PETA asked environmental
groups to sign on to a statement:
Based on the responses we received, as well as other published
information, we awarded each environmental group a grade
reflecting how responsible and "animal-friendly"
it is. |
