Animals used in research and education suffer unnecessarily and terribly. For many, their suffering begins the moment they are born. They are captive-bred in facilities which are not required to comply with even the Canadian Council on Animal Care’s minimum standards. 

When transferred to laboratories, these animals are crushed, burned, crippled and poisoned, all in a futile attempt to study responses which can be applied to humans – even though the very researchers inflicting the acute trauma recognize that animals do not model human responses accurately.

Canadian regulations for humane treatment of research animals are minimal, and shockingly even allow for animals to endure excruciatingly painful procedures while fully conscious without requiring the use of anesthetics of analgesics.

Even when not being poisoned or mutilated, the lives of animals in laboratories are nightmarish. Many spend their entire lives confined to small, barren metal or concrete cages. The isolation alone often causes social animals to become psychotic.

At the end of the experiment or when the animals are seen as past their usefulness, they are killed. Almost none make it out alive.