Business Interests Trump Animal Welfare--Always

The animal agribusiness and pharmaceutical lobbies are fucking unscrupulous. And the politicians who consistently, repeatedly bow to their demands aren't much better. I don't give a damn how many welfare reform laws we pass or try to pass, in this country or any other--the financial interests of the companies and individuals who make their money off abusing, tormenting, exploiting, and killing animals will always, always trump animals' basic interests in simply living free, natural lives. Governments and industries will always find a way around inconvenient reforms, even when the reforms are laughably minor, when it's in their financial interest to do so.

You don't want animals to be put through hell and then killed for no good reason? Wonderful. Then stop eating them. Stop donating to organizations that fund research on them. And when it comes to animal experimentation, start demanding not that governments and industries give animals bigger cages or nicer treatment or file more reports,  but that they stop experimenting on animals. We have alternatives. We have excellent alternatives in terms of what eat. And we have excellent, scientifically superior alternatives in terms of how we conduct our research. What brought on this rant tonight? I'll let the folks at Animal Aid (UK) tell you:

The European Parliament has voted to allow millions of animal ‘procedures’ to go ahead throughout the EU each year without the need to seek formal approval. Only ‘moderate’, ‘severe’ and primate experiments would need approval from a central authority, leaving an estimated 4.3 million experiments to go ahead ‘on the nod’.

MEPs were voting on a draft Directive that will update the current 23-year old statute governing vivisection across the EU. The May 5th vote was a critical moment in a hard fought battle during which parliamentarians have been targeted by pharmaceutical company lobbyists who are desperate to create an even more profit-friendly regime at the expense of animal protection.

Despite MEPs having voted last year to phase out all primate experiments, months of intense lobbying weakened their resolve. On May 5th, they voted to delay indefinitely a proposal by the European Commission to phase out the capture of wild-caught monkeys for breeding purposes. The Commission had also wanted monkeys to be used only in experiments relating to ‘life-threatening or debilitating’ human conditions. But, MEPs backed an amendment permitting primate use also for ‘basic’ or curiosity-driven research. The back-tracking amendments were tabled by British Tory MEP for the South-West region, Neil Parish, who is Rapporteur for the European Parliament’s Agricultural Committee.