Success: Health Canada Announces the End of Cosmetic Testing in Canada
Image by Andreas Lischka from Pixabay
Thanks to all of you who submitted letters, signed petitions and did other advocacy work in support of the Government of Canada making good on this election promise. We are pleased to be able to remove this issue as a take action issue from this page. Change does happen. To learn more click here.
Sadly, there is need for more change and animals need your help. See below a list of actions you can take to make a difference.
1. ADAV Petition: Ask Health Canada to Modernize Drug Testing in Canada
Canada has now banned the use of animals in cosmetic testing, and is phasing out toxicological testing of products bought by Canadian consumers. And in the US, the Food and Drug Administration has dropped the regulatory testing of new drugs on animals. Yet the development and approval of new pharmaceuticals in Canada still require animal testing be conducted.
We are urging Health Canada to implement changes to Canada’s drug testing regulations such as the United States has recently adopted through its FDA Modernization Act 2.0. This Act ends the requirement for the testing of new drugs on animals in favour of sophisticated, human-relevant and reliable evidence methods.
Technical advances in human-relevant testing and research have successfully demonstrated increased efficiency, reliability, cost-effectiveness and environmental sustainability. And with an over 90% failure rate of drugs that pass the initial animal testing phase, human health would only benefit by a complete revamping of our current drug review process.
Institutions such as the Centre for Alternatives to Animal Methods at the University of Windsor stand as an example of academic excellence and broader progress in Canadian medical research. Yet such centres remain underfunded while Canada’s animal use numbers stay high, at over 3,692,479 per year according to the latest reporting from the Canadian Council on Animal Care.
We urge the Canadian Government, Health Canada and our major funding agencies to enact policies that promote health research and testing innovation and which will save millions of animal – and many human – lives each year in Canada. It is essential that we reallocate funding from repetitive animal-testing-based science to the development, validation and implementation of scientifically and morally superior methods. As a signee of the International Cooperation on Alternative Test Methods (ICATM) in 2009, Health Canada must become proactive in this arena. Ask Canada to uphold our responsibility to reduce and replace the use of animals in biomedical research, training and testing.
2. Harvard Funding Cruel Monkey Research
We are sad to share the information below from PETA but pleased they offer an opportunity to take action. You can send a pre-written letter with just a few clicks. It only takes a moment.
| PETA’s 18-month investigation blew the lid off the Caucaseco Scientific Research Center, the Colombian scam organization that had been propped up with U.S. taxpayer money. But the more we dig, the worse it gets. Here’s the latest twist: PETA has found that Harvard University is among Caucaseco’s financial backers, and the school refuses to distance itself publicly from the sham operation, despite having every opportunity to do so. Astonishingly, this comes after Colombian officials found fraud in the organization’s science, shuttered its facilities, and rescued the animals—and even after the U.S. National Institutes of Health finally yanked its funding. Harvard has also been silent about Harvard Medical School experimenter Margaret Livingstone, who has sewn baby monkeys’ eyelids shut and left the animals in complete darkness for up to a year in gruesome sensory deprivation experiments. |
3. Canada Allowing Import of Monkeys for Research: Imports that the U.S. has Made Illegal
Thank you to PETA for this information and opportunity to take action.
Canadian officials haven’t been paying attention. The U.S. has suspended all shipments of monkeys from Cambodia following indictments by the U.S. Department of Justice against Cambodian government officials and nationals for allegedly abducting monkeys from their forest homes but claiming they were born in captivity so they could sell them to experimenters around the world.
But the Cambodian monkey trade is booming in Canada—and we need your help to shut it down.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is allowing the importation of hundreds—possibly thousands—of endangered long-tailed macaques from Cambodia for use in laboratories. A government database shows that hundreds of monkeys—perhaps more than 1,000—recently arrived in Montréal.
Please click the button below for more information and to send a letter.
4. Tell Neuralink: Stop Killing Monkeys
Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine has been doing a lot to reveal the realities of Elon Musk’s cruel Neuralink research. They recently sent out an action alert that we are pleased to share. You may also want to consider leaving Twitter, which is also owned by Musk. If you are in the market for an electric car, you may want to consider purchasing from a company other than Tesla, another of Musk’s companies.
From Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine:
Elon Musk’s company Neuralink is still conducting deadly brain experiments on monkeys and other animals. Please contact Neuralink and demand that they stop these cruel experiments now!
We sued Neuralink to obtain records, which revealed company employees conducted sloppy, painful brain surgeries on rhesus macaques that resulted in infections, seizures, paralysis, internal bleeding, and death. These poor creatures are suffering!
These horrible practices must end. Please take action with PCRM to demand this STOPS! Your support will help PCRM build on the progress we’ve already made together, including suing UC Davis to obtain footage of these experiments, filing complaints with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and urging the Department of Transportation (DOT) to investigate Neuralink for violations of federal hazardous material laws.
As someone who abhors animal cruelty, you have a lot of power—and if every PCRM member speaks up, we can make a difference! Add your name NOW—tell Neuralink to stop experiments on animals and end this cruelty. Thank you for your activism today.
Fireworks are a danger to the well-being of animals, including pets, farm animals, birds, and wildlife. Further they are a danger to vulnerable populations, including those suffering from PTSD, especially some veterans. They are a danger to the environment because they release dangerous toxic chemicals. And they are not cost effective.
Spectacular laser light displays and drone shows are a kinder, more exciting, and cost effective means of celebrating special events. Special thanks to Towards Freedom for their work on this issue.
5. Sign the No Animal Labs at the New St. Paul’s Hospital Petition
Every year, millions of animals in Canada experience excruciating pain and die in the name of research that does not reliably predict human outcomes. Live animals are used for burn research, psychological and physical pain research, given cancer, blinded, subjected to broken bones or strokes, swim tests in icy water, forced to inhale smoke and more. All when alternative ways of conducting research exist and it has been shown time and time again that, in research, animal models produce misleading results. Animal physiology is different to human physiology. For example, 96% of drugs that have tested successfully in animals have failed in human clinical trials.
HELP US TO END ANIMAL RESEARCH: PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION CALLING FOR NO ANIMAL LABS AT THE NEW ST. PAUL’S HOSPITAL IN VANCOUVER...
6. Tell SFU to Come Clean about Its Animal Research
Simon Fraser University refuses to release data on its animal use numbers or any details about its animal experimentation. British Columbia’s second largest university steadfastly ignores requests for information on how many animals are used in its teaching or experimentation protocols each year, what species are being used and the severity of pain or degree of invasiveness. They won’t say where the animals come from, won’t say what they are doing to them, nor will they provide any information on the most recent inspection reports.
What are they hiding?
7. Help End Cruelty to Piglets Used in Military Medical Training
Text from the petition, now closed, captures the issue well. You can still take action on this issue by clicking the “send letter” button below. It only takes a moment.
- Young pigs are poisoned with chemical weapons, irradiated, stabbed, dismembered, disemboweled and killed for Canadian military trauma training;
- The Department of National Defence (DND) continues to use pigs despite acknowledging that they are poor models for human anatomy and may actually interfere with effective training;
- The continued use of piglets for military trauma training puts Canadian soldiers’ lives at risk by using obsolete teaching methods and inapplicable animal models;
- Twenty-three of 30 NATO member nations no longer use animals for military trauma training;
- In the past 10 years, the DND spent over $1 million in tax-payer funds by purchasing pigs for military trauma training; and
- Human patient simulators which accurately mimic human anatomy and physiology are more applicable and cost-effective training tools for military trauma training.
We, the undersigned, citizens and residents of Canada, call upon the Minister of National Defence to bring an end to the use of animals in military trauma training and replace them with more advanced, human-relevant and less expensive human patient simulators.
8. Stop the Funding of Cruel & Outdated Burn Research on Animals
The BC Professional Fire Fighters’ Burn Fund directly funds burn research on live rabbits and mice in its Wound Healing Research Laboratory led by Dr. Aziz Ghahary.
The BC Fire Fighters have been exposed for cruel animal research before. In the 1990s, animal advocacy organization Lifeforce exposed BC Fire Fighters for funding research which involved burning rats with boiling water. As a result, the BC Fire Fighters promised to pull funding for animal research. However, with the establishment of Dr. Ghahary’s lab in 2005, research on animals has resumed...
9. Only Donate to Medical Charities that do NOT do Research on Animals.
Visit our Humane Charities site to see a list of medical charities that do and do not use animal models. Direct your dollars to those that don’t and if asked for a donation by those that do, let them know why you are not donating. Click the image below to go to the site:
10. Educate Yourself about the Environmental Impacts of Animal Testing
The Progressive Non-Animal Research Society (PNARS) has produced a report about the environmental impact of animal research. Use the button below to see the executive summary and full report.
11. Blow the Whistle: Have You Witnessed Cruelty in an Animal Laboratory?
Email whistleblower@adavsociety.org if you have.