Would animal lovers condone animal testing?

I’ve written a post explaining how I came across the info from The Ethical Consumer which is shown below. I have found it to be shocking without feeling helpless or unworthy.

We CAN make a difference! The action of sharing this information will have a positive impact, I’m sure. Have a read and let me know what you think. 🙂

Would you want to feed your pet the the ‘normal’ meat products sold in supermarkets after reading the information below?

Animal testing policy

Animal lovers also need to think about more than the ingredients.

Animal-tested pet food is common, and involves nutrition tests on captive animals which can cause stress and discomfort. For example, according to the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) website, NestlÁ© Purina Pet Care kept 48 labradors in a laboratory environment for 15 years. Some of the dogs were fed just half the amount of food of their litter mates, and they were subjected to weekly weigh-ins and annual x-rays, heart scans, ECGs and blood pressure tests.

The following companies also confirmed to Ethical Consumer that they conducted tests on animals.

Hill’s (Colgate-Palmolive),
Iams (Procter & Gamble) and Masterfoods (Mars Inc) Focus 100,
NestlÁ© ,
Pets Choice,
However, Town & Country Pet Foods and Wagg Foods did not provide any information so were awarded our worst mark for animal testing policy.

Burns, Butcher’s, Happidog, Harbingers of a New Age, Suma and Yarrah Organic confirmed that they did not conduct animal testing for pet food.

The irony of using animal testing for products aimed at animal lovers has not gone unnoticed by animal welfare groups. Uncaged Campaigns and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) are focusing on Procter & Gamble’s pet food subsidiary Iams, whereas BUAV is calling for a boycott of Colgate-Palmolive, Mars, NestlÁ©, Iams and Eukanuba.

BUAV is also running a ‘no animal testing’ pet food standard of approved companies.

Burns Pet Nutrition, Harbingers of a New Age, and Happidog are all approved by the scheme.

Ami, Focus 100, WackiDog, Wagg and Vitalin were not included in BUAV’s research.

The only difference between Ethical Consumer’s and BUAV’s results concerned Butcher’s Pet Care (FW Baker), which told Ethical Consumer it did not develop any “product using either captive or invasive testing techniques”. It did say it conducted ‘palatability’ tests which involved letting the pets test the food in their homes, and asking their owners for feedback. However, according to BUAV’s research, as least one company in Butcher’s supply chain permanently housed cats and/or dogs for the purposes of pet food testing.