By Michelle Miller
FTP Youth Intern

Everyone’s eyes were fixed on the screen. Their hearts went out to the animals on that screen and their ears were hurting from the sounds being projected. I could hear some women near me, hiding their anger and frustration behind tears of compassion. Those cries were nothing compared to the ones coming from the screen — the cries of the animals that come to Huntingdon Life Sciences.

We hear talk about war everyday on the news, on the streets, in the home, but we hear little about the atrocities that happen every single day inside our own country. There’s a holocaust going on, inside Huntingdon Life Sciences. 500 living beings die daily inside the doors of Huntingdon Life Sciences. (I say living beings because that’s exactly what animals are, just like human beings.) HLS is one of the largest animal testing laboratories in the world and the largest in Europe. Its cycle of pain is operated in three different centers. Two of the centers are in England and one is in East Millstone, NJ. 

Huntingdon Life Sciences will test anything for anybody. Their research includes testing the toxicity of household products, herbicides, pesticides, and GMOs. One of their biggest consumers is Monsanto, or, as I like to say, Monsatan. According to papers from HLS, in three tests alone Monsanto killed 88 marmoset monkeys. Now some of you might be too desensitized to care about monkeys or animals that we normally wouldn’t consider pets but what about animals that people have gained attachment too, such as dogs? Imprisoned creatures in these laboratories include dogs, cats, monkeys, birds, rabbits, fish, farm animals, and the list goes on.  You might not have compassion toward the fish being murdered but could you imagine your dog being trapped in a tiny cage with wires going through their body and tubes of chemicals being shoved down their throat? Along with the already horrific acts done in the name of “testing,” workers have been seen abusing the animals in situations unrelated to testing. I even saw a video of some of the workers clenching a beagle by the throat and slamming its body against the wall and then using its head as a punching bag. Death is all around and turned into a commodity.  Hundreds, even thousands of animals die in the process of bringing you a medicine.

Huntingdon Life Sciences researchers have admitted that animal research is “only reliable 5-25 percent of the time.” Undercover investigators have also seen evidence of falsified or distorted data related to testing. There have also been reports of workers coming to work drunk and on drugs. There have been cases of people getting sick from taking medicine that was tested on animals possibly because the reported test results were inaccurate and deceptive. Think about that next time you pop a pill because you’re feeling ill. Think about what happens.  

If not animal testing, then what?

Lawrence Carter-Long, former poster child for Easter Seals was one of the speakers at the anti-vivisection conference in San Francisco. He lives with cerebral palsy. People always ask him, “If there was a cure for cerebral palsy, would you take it? He said that if the cure was tested on animals, absolutely not. He said it’s not about finding a cure; it’s about being happy with how you are and who you are.

Another example like that could be our society and the Earth. We should be looking at ourselves and how we can use the Earth while still keeping it intact with it’s natural form instead of destructing and shaping the natural environment for our own short-term benefits. 

Another thing is, the irony to the medicinal industry. Look at what people do when they get sick: They go to the doctor. But why don’t they go to a veterinarian? Because animals have different systems than humans and need to be treated differently. So then, does it make any sense that we would be taking medicines that are tested on animals? No, it doesn’t making any sense. Each species is affected differently and to test one product on one species and then give it to another is absurd. As stated earlier, the tests are only 5 to 25 percent reliable and that’s on a completely different species.  It’s scary to even think about what that percentage would be on the human species. But then again, we don’t know because we’re not the ones having tests run on us. 

So when we look at Huntingdon Life Sciences, it’s not just the animals that are being harmed and killed, it’s humans as well. It’s just another vicious cycle in our society. Right now, some toxic chemical is being tested on animals, which kills them, then that chemical is put out as a product to use as an herbicide. So then you have that chemical put onto the ground which then destroys the Earth, and then the fumes from the chemical harms people. And then people need a cure for that rash they got from those chemicals, so they do more testing to come out with a new product that’s going to keep the cycle going. And you can look at it over and over but the base of this cycle is for capital gain. In a capitalist society, it’s about making more and more and having more ideas to make more and more, and that is the foundation to all these detrimental cycles. 

We cannot heal ourselves overnight, but we can inform ourselves and gain strength through knowledge everyday and a great step would be to stop HLS and stop the pain. Every year, 180,000 animals die at HLS. That’s 180,000 reasons to keep working through the struggle. Because if things like HLS never stop, then it will only continue until one day, we will be left with nothing.

Michelle Miller is a Flagstaff resident and an intern for Flagstaff Tea Party. She is 17 and home-schooled.