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The goal of an animal shelter is to provide a safe and caring environment until the animal is either reclaimed by his or her owner or placed in a new home. What happened to this honorable and compassionate goal? Animal shelters provide the next step toward getting forever and loving homes for these animals. Even the most seemingly unadoptable animal can usually be adopted.
When sold to Class B dealers who then sell to laboratories or colleges, these animals experience horrific pain and cruelty. Once an animal is brought into a laboratory and the doors are closed, that animal is doomed to a life of fear and suffering. Our lawmakers seem to be unaware that these animals suffer for the rest of their life. We have animal cruelty laws and yet somehow these laws do not apply to laboratory facilities that purposely inflict pain and suffering on animals. In some states, it is actually required that a certain number of animals be sold to laboratories. These animals are usually acquired by class B dealers who buy and sell animals for a personal profit. Animals are sentient beings and they feel every bit of the pain, starvation, dehydration and mental anguish as they are put through rigorous tests, are operated on, or made to eat or drink caustic substances that cause unimaginable suffering. These laboratories do this in the name of science. So to sell or give an animal to a laboratory is outright betrayal of these animals and the community whose taxpayer dollars are used to keep shelters running, believing that these facilities are taking care of and getting homes for these helpless beings. To give or sell animals to laboratories is in direct opposition of the original intent of animal shelters.
We are asking that you change these laws so that the buying or selling of any shelter animal for any experimentation or testing is immediately discontinued.
We ask that you would make the animal cruelty laws count against Class B dealers who handle these animals without any concern for their welfare.
We ask that laboratories and Class B dealers be required to follow the rules and regulations of the Animal Welfare Act.
We ask that you would be a voice for the voiceless and protect them under the law that you have the authority to change.
He said it best when Mahatma Gandhi Said “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”

Created by Marni Montanez and Judy Kirkpatrick

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