Dear Mr. President,

Do you ever think about how most of the products we buy in a store come to be? Where most of those products come from? Where they’re tested? Who or what they are tested on?

Alarmingly, most of our commonly used items- especially cosmetics and medicines- are tested on animals before they are placed on store shelves.

According to www.procon.org , “ An estimated 26 million animals are used every year in the United States for scientific and commercial testing.”

Most of the time, these animals are left to suffer, or even die from the chemicals and various medical procedures administered to them.

As a whole, the number of animals used for experimental or medical testing has declined, but the numbers in countries that have not banned animal testing, they are only on the rise.

Mr. President, something needs to be done about this sickening issue.

Most of the time, these animals are left to suffer, or even die from the chemicals and various medical procedures administered to them.

Data from Humane Society International shows that “Animals used in experiments are commonly subjected to force feeding, forced inhalation, food and water deprivation, prolonged periods of physical restraint, the infliction of burns and other wounds to study the healing process, the infliction of pain to study its effects and remedies, and killing by carbon dioxide asphyxiation, neck-breaking, decapitation, or other means.”

“The Draize eye test, used by cosmetics companies to evaluate irritation caused by shampoos and other products, involves rabbits being incapacitated in stocks with their eyelids held open, sometimes for multiple days, so they cannot blink away the products being tested.”

In addition to those horrifying and gruesome procedures, most of the animals used in these tests are not even protected by the Animal Welfare Act.

Among these animals are some of the most commonly used as test subjects: including rats, mice, fish, and birds.

And as if that isn’t enough, these procedures and experiments are significantly more expensive than other methods of clinical and commercial research experiments. A recently developed technique, called in vitro costs a great deal less than the tests done on animals.

Please, Mr. President, something needs to be done to save our precious animals from a life of pain and misery. Don’t let the thought of their cruel treatment and imprisonment haunt the minds of America’s citizens.

The time to act is now. I hope that one day, there will be an end to animal cruelty. But it needs to start with us. With you. With America.

Sincerely,

Katie W.