Each year, the American biomedical industry uses the blood of 500,000 horseshoe crabs to test medical devices and vaccines for toxins, a figure that has likely surged with the rush to deliver a COVID vaccine to billions worldwide--despite an alternative being available. About 30 percent of crabs perish, and piles of dead horseshoe crab bodies have been documented on the shoreline in the aftermath of these harvests. TAKE ACTION: Urge U.S. regulators to stop horseshoe crab harvests TODAY!

In my new blog for The Every Animal Project, I describe my experience with prehistoric, 400-million-year-old horseshoe crabs spawning in the Delaware Bay this summer, and how they are harvested for blood-letting by the thousands by our medical industry. I conclude: "In the midst of a catastrophe like COVID, where a robust vaccine supply is crucial to our own species, we especially should not be relying on the blood of such a vulnerable animal to ensure our safe supply of medical tools. For the past 20 years, an effective, man-made alternative has been at the ready, in which a horseshoe crab gene is cloned, and cells grown from it are cultured in a lab to produce commercial-grade recombinant factor (rFC). rFC is already displacing horseshoe crab blood across Europe and trickling into Asia. In the United States, though, our revolving-door bureaucracy, like the crabs themselves, appears steadfastly opposed to evolution."

Read the full blog today, and then take action at the petition on the bottom of the blog!