The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the federal Animal Enterprise Act (AETA), claiming it violates the First Amendment. Under AETA, which was passed in 2006, anyone who causes the loss of property or profits to institutions that use or sell animals can be prosecuted and face up to 20 years in prison, depending on the amount of profit loss. CCR claims that AETA is vague and “makes no distinction between loss caused by criminal acts and loss caused by constitutionally-protected activity.”

Trespassing = terrorism?

What’s scarier?  The fact that big business was able to convince Congress to pass a law describing non-violent animal rights activists as “terrorists” or the fact that exercising our first amendment right to free speech can land us in jail, if it’s animal abusers we are targeting. Does that mean I can be arrested for protesting horse-drawn carriages in midtown Manhattan if potential customers decide not to take a ride after seeing my poster? Activists have already been prosecuted and sent to prison under AETA, but the law, which is so clearly unconstitutional, will eventually be overturned.  Learn more about AETA and see how you can help at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

According to the NY Times, China’s FDA will stop mandating animal tests on some cosmetics, including shampoos and certain skin-care products, if the manufacturers can assess risk using other methods, such as evaluating  existing data on the ingredients.  More than 50 activists celebrated in the streets in the city of Dalian in a rally organized by the Humane Society International, one of the NGOs behind the Be Cruelty-Free campaign in China. As many as 300,000 rabbits, guinea pigs, mice and other animals are used to test cosmetics in China every year.

Animals used in experiments are among the most tortured on the planet. Just imagine spending your entire life in a cage and being pinned down and having chemicals forced down your throat or injected into your eyes. In the U.S., the Humane Cosmetics Act would prohibit animal testing for cosmetics manufactured or sold in the country. Please ask your U.S. Representative to cosponsor this bill.

Stop Animal Exploitation Now (SAEN) is calling for the USDA to fine MIT after a lab worker cleaned a cage without removing a rabbit inside of it. In December, the USDA fined Harvard Medical School $24,000 after finding repeated animal welfare violations that resulted in the deaths of four monkeys since 2011.

What right do we have imprisoning, experimenting on and killing animals in laboratories? These animals didn’t choose to sacrifice their freedom, and they didn’t voluntarily donate their bodies. They don’t belong to us. To make matters worse, we treat them like inanimate objects in labs — storing them in small cages, depriving them of socialization and the outdoors and cutting them open with no painkillers. The irony is that using animals in research is unreliable and outdated. It continues because it’s a money-making enterprise. For more information and to see how you can help, please visit Stop Animal Experimentation Now.

India has banned animal testing for cosmetics, becoming the first country in Asia to do so. The European Union, Israel, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand already have cosmetic testing bans.

According to Cruelty Free International, many countries in the world, including the U.S., still allow “antiquated, cruel, and unnecessary” animal testing for cosmetics. Animal testing is unnecessary because “non-animal tests are quicker, cheaper and more reliable.” Furthermore, the use animal tests to determine product safety has been “increasingly called into question because transferring the results of animal tests to humans has proven to be problematic and misleading in many cases.” To find out how you can help, please visit Cruelty Free International, “the only global organizations working solely to end animal testing for cosmetics and consumer products.”

The Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) has released a 3-minute animated video that “exposes animal testing for cosmetics, chemicals, and household products as a cruel, ineffective, and unnecessary practice that puts consumers and the environment at risk.”

Greed, not science, continues to drive product testing on animals. As explained in the video, animal testing is not only cruel (torturous, if we are going to be honest), but it is also unreliable, expensive, and outdated. In addition, the data are often meaningless, as the response to a chemical in animals does not necessarily indicate how humans will react.