Boycott IAMS and Proctor & Gamble!!!

[Doot]

Here's what I say. Anyone worth their beans in humanity and has a pet will research these things. Chris and I have a dog. Call it pet slavery. It's a therapuetic thing. And yes, I will never be able to give back to Bella what she has given to me, but when I research her food options, buy her organic treats, ensure she has her medications and vaccines and YES spay her so as to control animal overpopulation, I take that responsibility.

Fact is, most all medications that keep you and your family healthy are tested somehow. Whether it be humans or animals. Unless you take a completely experimental herbal route to treat the ailing, any allegations towards animal tetsing cruelty are nullified.

Experience all my life with PETA has made me suspicious of their practices. I definitely wouldn't put it past them to stage such things.

I don't agree in cruelty to animals, however, I see no other way we can find cures and progressions in sciences/foods/medications that cannot be tested on unliving organisms.

Just because we disagree on the intensity of the issue does not mean I am for cruelty.

Unless PETA can guarantee that none of its members EVER use items that have been tested on animals, I won't take them seriously.

[Gryph]

PETA has staged such things. Two fairly high ranking members were arrested for dumping dead cats and dogs into a mall dumpster awhile back. I believe they found out the animals were all from an animal shelter.

[Nacht]

how can peta "stage" something when these companies have fully admitted it?
yes almost everything has been tested on an animal at one point, but we are technologically advanced enough NOW to do BETTER tests. research animal testing. you will discover that there is only a 50% accuracy in its applicability to humans. other species have different make-up than us.
we have the choice now. we have advanced beyond these outdated tests from the 1920's. the companies themselves say they just "don't want to change".
there are tons of other options that are 90% accurate compared to the 50-75% accuracy of animals tests. for example: scientists can make cultures of HUMAN skin as opposed to live rabbits. a lot of us have "organ donor" on their drivers licenses, scientists can use HUMAN corneas from cadavers. wouldn't it make more sense to test in on HUMAN anatomy rather than another species? these options are more COST EFFICIENT in the long run as well. which all these companies care about anyway, right? their bottom line? you can have a whole wall of thousands of skin cultures as opposed to a whole building of live animals(that they have to feed etc).

procter&gamble said they will not stop testing on animals because "they don't want to prove peta right."

this arguement is not about peta. it is about a moral decision not to support companies that take pride in harming animals in inefficient, inaccurate, outdated tests.
here is a list of companies that test on animals to make us everyday products like feminine products (tampons tested on monkeys), soap (skin burned off of rabbits, and mice's stomaches filled with soap. tell me what THAT test proves), toothpaste(animals' gums chopped open so that even eating is painful) etc..
arm&hammer bic
boyle-midway chesebrough-ponds
ponds vaseline church&dwight
clairol clorox colgate-palmolive
coty covergirl del laboratories
dial corp helene curtis johnson&johnson
lever l'oreal maxfactor mead
melaleuca mennen nesteric cosmetics
new dana perfumes noxell olay
oral-b pantene pfizer physique
playtex always crest procter&gamble
banana boat reckitt benckiser richardson-vicks
sally hansen schering-plough s.c.johnson
softsoap suave unilever

purina pedigree science diet masterfoods mars
nestle friskies whiskas eukanuba iams

please boycott these companies! i realize that they sell almost everything, but we can send them a message if we all ban together and stop buying from them! there are other alternatives to testing: hundreds of other equally big companies do it everyday!

[Al the DLOE]

[Nogrick]

Even skin cultures need nutrients to be kept alive and as a viable test medium. Otherwise the cells would die before any conclusive results could be made. Animal or Skin Culture, it still has to be "fed".

[Nacht]

nogrick: skin cultures are not alive and feel no pain. they do not require huge buildings to support them either. sucking up power and generating waste.

dloe: that is not true. if you remember in the eighties when the big make-up corporations were exposed for this we all stood up and raised our voices and we effected CHANGE. yes, all of the people on po are a small number, but how many people do you know? and how many people do they know? and like i said. corporations only care about their bottom line. if we make them lose money, they will be forced to listen to what their CONSUMERS want; not what THEY want. it is not up to them to decide what happens to us or what goes into our food. WE decide what we want to eat and how it gets to us. we are advanced enough now that we can create accountability. turning a blind eye to problems will not make them go away. this is going to escalate beyond our control. then what will be left to choose from? what ELSE will they be able to control in our lives? we give them too much leeway, and they are running with it.
also: i don't know where the "pet slavery" thing came from. there is nowhere on peta that refers to companion animals as slaves. if anything, our pets own us! if anyone has ever had a cat, they would agree with that! lol

[Al the DLOE]

skin culures not feelpain: that requires the next step up in sentience above pure cellular level
culture not alive: so does that mean a bacterial culture, just another mass of cells, is not alive?

in response to your response to me, you proved the point i made. media support and flame is how it works. economic damage may get their response but i was trying to say your approach is historically proven to not be effective or at least not in the way you intend. humans people dont turn a blind eye typically. they just dont pay attention. if it goes too far, it is a time for sanctions or business licence revocation, ie there is a method to handle this but it only comes into play if you plaster it in the media and make a stink which does not need many people to achieve, just good connections.

[Doot]

Skin cultures are not alive and that's exactly why they wouldn't be suitable means of tetsing since you would not be experiencing accurate results of what effect a product would have in the environment it would be used.

[Minosheep]

[Ming]

Ok, I feel like my statement is starting to cause an argument, and I want to say that I think I was misunderstood in what I was talking about. When I was talking about acceptable testing, I wasn't talking about cutting up animals, infecting them with anything, or doing anything that would fall under the general realm of being cruel. I don't condone any of this. But at the same time, I don't condone PETA either.

The type of testing that I was talking about is something akin to, say, taste testing. While I was working for Pepsi, I learned about a department that takes volunteers, trains them in how to differentiate certain tastes from others, helps them develop their palates, and then puts them through tests where they try different products to determine which they prefer. That's what I was talking about, just with animals. Regardless of whether you believe in a company's products or not, a certain amount of testing should go into something before it gets released to the public. An example of this not happening and the product backfiring was Crystal Pepsi. Essentially, they rushed to get a product out that was unstable and could not be clearly defined based on consumer tastes.

The point I was trying to make with all of this is that I don't think that PETA can condone even the humane, ethical testing. And if you don't test these products out to some degree, then bad things can happen. I think that this position is foolish, selfish, and ignorant on their part. But then again, they represent one extreme side of opinion.

And that's all I have to say about that...