The images in the following program are very sensitive and may be as disturbing to viewers as they were to us. However, we have to show the truth about cruelty to animals.

Compassionate viewers, today’s Stop Animal Cruelty program features the first of a two-part series on the sickening practice of using animals in laboratory experiments. Sadly testing on animals occurs in the cosmetics, defense, pharmaceutical, and a number of other industries. It is estimated that globally 100 million animals die needlessly each year in experiments.

The National Anti-Vivisection Society, the world’s first organization to campaign against the practice, was founded in 1875 by the great British humanitarian Frances Power Cobbe, who published leaflets and articles opposing experimentation and gained the support of many prominent figures of her day.

The current Chief Executive of the organization, Ms. Jan Creamer, recently spoke with Supreme Master Television about the ghastly nature of animal testing and why animal-free research is superior in all respects.

They’re used in a range of experiments, whether it’s academics using them for fundamental research where they’re just trying to find something out. They’re used for product safety testing, and they’re used for safety testing of things like batch testing or things like vaccines, and that’s where the majority of animals are used, over three million in the UK and 100 million worldwide.

The point that we have made about animal research is that there are fundamental species differences between humans and other animals.

And so any animal experiment isn’t going to tell you reliably what kind of outcome you might see in human beings, and that’s when you sometimes get news of a drug that has gone on to injure or even kill human beings, because it was judged as safe in an animal test, and so that’s why we need to shift away from 100-year-old technology, animal testing, a very crude and cruel way of trying to test a product, to something more sophisticated, which are the advanced scientific and technological methods that we advocate.

These animals that are used in these experiments, where do they normally come from?

Mostly from suppliers in the UK and in Europe. We do have regulations for animal suppliers in the UK; over the last 20 years or so, our legislation has regulated and licensed supply. So we have purpose-bred animals from regulated supplies. In the past, prior to that, random animals were taken, stray animals, animals such as that, but not so much in Europe.

You’ve got a couple of key problems with using non-purpose-bred animals. One of the key fundamentals when they’re using the animals in research, what they claim is that they need to know the animal’s background. They need to know its genetic background, they need to know what substances has it been exposed to.

So they can’t really justify using stray animals or animals from the wild when they’re trying to claim at the same time that animal research is scientific. They know the background of those animals. So, scientifically, people should not want to use animals from unknown sources.

But then the second problem that you have is that the more you refine animals and provide them for research, for example, a lot of the genetic manipulation of animals (Yes) and the purpose breeding of animals, what you get is a certain animal, series of animals where you try to standardize the way those animals might respond, that people aren’t standardized. We’re varied, and we have a whole genetic mix there. So fundamentally, it’s like a loop of problems that animal research creates, a loop of problems.

Not only is animal experimentation inhumane and immoral, the enormous differences between humans and animals make research results totally invalid. For example, aspirin causes birth defects in dogs and cats, but not in people. Elraldin, a heart drug, was judged safe for humans based on animal testing, but it can cause blindness, growths, stomach troubles, and joint pains in those who take the drug.

Scientists know that there are fundamental differences between the species, and they know that any animal test that they do, they need to go on and test it on humans to ensure that it’s safe. But they’re taking the view that that is all they have, but those scientists are now in the minority. (Right.) The fact is that non-animal methods are now in the majority in terms of the whole overall research effort.

I think it’s one of the cancer societies that said many years ago, that only two percent of their total research effort used animals and half of that two percent was spent on just feeding and caring for the animals, not on the actual research. So the bulk of scientific and medical research is without animals. (Right.)

The problem is that animal research over the past 100 years has gradually been incorporated into legislation, and so animal tests are the things that the legislators use as their yardstick. The civil servants, when they’re looking for a tick box, are looking for an animal test, that’s what has to change.

And does your organization itself also provide scientific evidence to the scientists and the government?

We do. One of the key things that the National Anti-Vivisection Society has done over the last 20 years or so is to invest in non-animal scientific and medical research.

And also in producing scientific briefings for governments and legislators on ways to replace the use of animals, and also to show and explain, we have our own scientists who can explain how non-animal methods, the tissues and cell cultures, the computer technology, using computer modeling, and analytical techniques, things like new technologies like toxicogenomics, accelerator mass spectrometry where you give volunteers tiny, tiny doses of a product, (Right) so minute they can’t hurt them, and then you analyze the effects that had on them.

And then you get actually proper results, because you get results in human beings, rather than in animals. So all of these new scientific techniques that we’ve been promoting and funding are what we’re putting forward to governments now as a way to replace animal tests. Fact is animal research is unreliable. There are fundamental differences between animals and humans, it’s something that we do, because we’ve been doing it for 100 years; it’s time to change.

When we return we’ll hear more from Ms. Creamer about the ruthless, heinous practice of animal experimentation. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

You’re watching Stop Animal Cruelty on Supreme Master Television featuring an interview with Jan Creamer, Chief Executive of the UK-based National Anti-Vivisection Society, about animal testing. We asked Ms. Creamer what happens to an animal at the end of an experiment. Do they then gain their freedom?

All animals used in research must either be killed at the end of the experiment or if they’re used as controls they can be used again in a different type of experiment, and certainly this was one of the key issues for debate. When the new legislation that we’re going to have was being debated in the European Parliament, it was “How do we prevent animals from being used and re-used, and re-used?”

One of the things that we had in UK legislation is a bar on re-use of animals. So this is something that in the next two years is going to be hotly debated in the UK Parliament, and as we start to bring in this new legislation from Europe, is “What limits do we have on re-use of animals?”

While many governments have rules and regulations concerning animal testing, these so-called animal welfare protections are essentially meaningless and in no way justify the continuance of the practice.

Although we have regulations about the way the animals should be kept and the way they should be treated, and their feeding and watering, and so forth, and the environments that they are in, the fact is they are just a means to an end, and so in terms of the way they live, they live in extremely deprived conditions.

You’ve got rats, mice, guinea pigs, and small animals like that that are living in small, bare, plastic boxes. The other animals like primates, you’ve got living in bare cages.

For all of the government’s regulations saying that the animals are entitled to environmental enrichment and things to give them interests while they are in their cages, there is also the caveat that they can have this environmental enrichment unless there’s a potential for it to affect the outcome of the experiment. So there is always potential for that, so they don’t get the environmental enrichment. So again something is given but then taken away, I think.

Are governments now waking up to the fact that animal testing is inaccurate and unwarranted? Ms. Creamer provides her perspective.

They are seeing that non-animal research methods are the way forward, the cutting edge, the leading edge of development in science and technology is by using the new techniques, the computer-modeling techniques, (Yes) sophisticated techniques. And animal experiments are a thing of the past.

And governments do know this, and they see this, but they are still being advised by a minority of scientists (Right) who still cling to using animals. They’ve built their careers on animal research and they don’t want to let that go.

Where do you think these techniques are predominantly used at the moment, and in which country, would you say?

Certainly in the UK, we’re using them more and more. In some countries in Europe, the non-animal research techniques are being quite well used. The biggest problem is that many countries in Europe, their science and technology and their animal research base is way behind countries such as the United Kingdom.

And so if you have this imbalance in Europe, where you have a few countries who are very sophisticated in their approach to replacement of animal use, you have some countries who barely know what replacement techniques are, so we’re trying to bring those countries up to speed. But certainly in terms of advancing their science base and their technology, the answers, the solutions for them is to use advanced techniques rather than animals because that just takes them into a backward technology.

Jan Creamer, we applaud your work that champions the rights of animals and has saved many of them from being used in testing. Through the work of the National Anti-Vivisection Society and other like-minded groups throughout the world may the crude, callous practice of animal experimentation soon completely end.

Each of us can help protect the lives of our animal friends every day by purchasing only those products which have not been tested on animals and by embracing the organic vegan diet.

For more details on the National Anti-Vivisection Society please visit www.navs.org.uk

Thank you for your company today on Stop Animal Cruelty. Please join us again next week for part two of our program with more from our interview with Jan Creamer on animal experimentation. Enlightening Entertainment is coming up next, after Noteworthy News. May all of Earth’s inhabitants live in peace and harmony.