posted 01-14-2004 04:44 PM         

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Thank you for your e-mail message regarding the Iams Company’s program of animal experimentation. If you are not familiar with this issue, please visit IamsCruelty.com for details of our nine-month investigation into the company’s “nutritional” experiments on dogs and cats. If you are writing with regard to Iams’ International Animal Care Advisory Board, please allow us to share with you our position on this matter.
Life for animals in laboratories is filled with days, weeks, months, and years of loneliness, suffering, pain, and fear. While a toy, a resting board, or a few minutes of “socialization” (if provided) may slightly ease the horrors of imprisonment, they do not make animal experimentation humane.
Therefore, Iams’ International Animal Care Advisory Board is in a predicament. While it can evaluate Iams’ program of animal experimentation and make recommendations, nothing that it can say or do—short of calling on Iams to stop experimenting on dogs and cats—will change this one simple fact: Iams’ use of animals in laboratories is inherently cruel and, for that matter, unnecessary. In addition, Iams and the members of this board have no way of knowing what is happening to the animals inside the company’s numerous contract-testing facilities at any given time.
No person, organization, or corporation that truly cares about animals would ever condone or support the use of animals in pet-food tests in laboratories. This is why we have asked the individuals who sit on Iams’ International Animal Care Advisory Board to call on Iams to stop conducting nutritional experiments on cats and dogs and, instead, rely only on laboratory analysis of formulas for nutritional composition, in-home palatability studies using dogs and cats whose human companions have volunteered them for such tests, and collaborative studies with private veterinary clinics that have patients who have diseases or conditions of interest to the company.
A review of the members of this board, which was created by Iams, reveals that it is not as “independent” as the company would have us believe and that it may be unwilling to heed the very reasonable call for an end to Iams’ program of animal testing in laboratories:

Michael Arms

Michael Arms is the president of the Helen Woodward Animal Center (HWAC) in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. Like many facilities, HWAC has accepted the support of such corporate sponsors as Iams and the PETCO Foundation.

While the president or director of a facility cannot be faulted for accepting a check from a wealthy corporation (which is often hoping to build brand loyalty while improving its public image), we believe that having that same individual sit in judgment of the sponsoring corporation’s activities represents a conflict of interest. Arms’ characterization of PETCO (which has a deplorable animal-care record) as being a “responsible” corporate partner is just one example of what happens when a facility’s president tries to walk the fine line between advocating for animals and maintaining a cordial relationship with a corporate sponsor that profits from the exploitation of animals.

Kathryn Bayne, Ph.D.

Kathryn Bayne is associate director of the Association for the Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC).

AAALAC, which is made up of those who support and/or have participated in animal experimentation, was originally established to thwart the passage of the Animal Welfare Act (it did not succeed). AAALAC is widely considered to be a smokescreen used by the animal-experimentation industry in an effort to add an air of legitimacy where none is deserved.

The Iams laboratory that we investigated (please see IamsCruelty.com); the notorious Huntingdon Life Sciences, a frequent violator of federal laws; and the University of North Carolina, where we recently documented egregious cruelty to animals—live animals in the dead-animal cooler, cutting off the heads of mice and rats with scissors, and sick and injured animals languishing for days or weeks without veterinary care—are just a few of the facilities that are AAALAC-accredited.

The Reverend Kenneth Boyd

Kenneth Boyd is a professor of medical ethics at Edinburgh University Medical School and the chair of the Boyd Group. Boyd is particularly interested in studying the cost-benefit relationship of animal use to human benefit.

The Boyd Group, which publishes ethics papers concerning the debate about animal research, was founded in part by neuroscientist Colin Blakemore. Blakemore is best known for his experiments in which he sewed shut the eyes of kittens in an attempt to determine how the loss of vision in early development affects the brain.

Stephen Hansen, D.V.M.

Stephen Hansen is senior vice president of the ASPCA’s Animal Poison Control Center. Iams is a corporate sponsor of the ASPCA and sponsors the ASPCA’s Pet Nutrition and Science Advisory Service.

The ASPCA recently conducted an inspection of a contract-testing laboratory “to be used” by Iams. The following is some of what the ASPCA had to report:

The animals had names.
The cats “were reported to have 4-5 hours out of their cages each day.”
The dogs “were housed in short-fenced runs and had platforms up off of the floor.”
The dogs were provided with “socialization time.”
A study “scheduled for implementation on the day of inspection” was “designed to verify that the diet being fed would allow the animals to maintain normal health and body condition.”
“The findings from studies done at this facility are designed to prove complete and balanced nutrition for specific products. The information from this type of study is generally presented on the product label.”

Once again, there is a conflict of interest here because of the relationship already established between the ASPCA and Iams. Do the animals care if they have names? The Iams dogs at the contract lab that PETA just exposed all had names, too, and they were treated just as badly as those without names. We hope that the ASPCA is not justifying these experiments based on the fact that they are being conducted in order to properly label a product, because many pet-food manufacturers satisfy labeling requirements by doing a chemical analysis of the food, not by imprisoning animals in cages. Such a justification would be unconscionable.

Robert Hubrecht, Ph.D.

Robert Hubrecht is a member of the Research Defense Society—a corporate-funded pro-vivisection lobby group that has lobbied against the requirement for a cost-benefit assessment for animal experiments in the U.K. He is also assistant director of the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare (UFAW). The following statement is posted on the organization’s Web site: “UFAW is a unique scientific and technical animal welfare organization. We use scientific knowledge and established expertise to improve the welfare of animals kept as pets, in zoos, laboratories, and on farms and of wild animals with which we interact.

Irene Rochlitz, Ph.D.

Iams describes Irene Rochlitz as an “independent veterinary consultant in feline welfare.” Rochlitz studied the “effects of quarantine accommodation and environment” on cat behavior and found that “quarantine causes severe problems for cats with long-term effects on cat behaviour.” Iams’ program of animal experimentation has resulted in the “quarantine” of countless animals, some for years at a time.

Andrew Rowan, Ph.D.

Andrew Rowan is senior vice president for research, education, and international issues at the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). According to the HSUS, “The primary aim of The HSUS’s Animal Research Issues section is to promote ‘alternatives’ to the use of animals in harmful research, testing, and education.” Rowan’s appointment to Iams’ advisory board presents the HSUS with the unique opportunity to help end an inherently cruel and worthless program of animal experimentation. However, correspondence between the HSUS and PETA indicates that the HSUS is not taking the position that dogs and cats should not be caged in laboratories for use in nutritional experiments—Rowan has only indicated that his interest is in reducing pain and distress.
Iams supported the HSUS’ Pet Fest America, which featured “The Iams Superdogs.” Unlike the dogs imprisoned for use in Iams’ nutritional experiments, these “canine acrobats” were free to run, jump, and retrieve.
We hope that this information proves useful. Thank you for your efforts in behalf of animals.

Sincerely,

Peter Wood

Research Associate

posted 01-25-2004 01:07 PM         

quote:

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People are meant to eat meat, thus the canines in the front of your mouth to tear meat

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It's well known in the medical field that the anatomy of our teeth is not suited for eating meat. I learned this early on in dental school. Humans have no sharp front teeth (and our canines are not considered sharp), but flat rear molars for grinding. If you do some research on this topic you will also find that it goes beyond our teeth. For example: our intestinal tract, alkaline saliva with ptyalin, skin pores, stomach acid and salivary glands all point to the fact that our bodies are equipped to be herbivores.

Evidence has showed that people started out as herbivores. Some humans started to become omnivorous after the discovery of fire, as they were able to cook the meat.