JAPAN: Activists Face Uphill Battle to Stop Animal Experiments

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Jun 28 1995 (IPS) - Every year, pharmaceutical and cosmetics companies in Japan subject millions of cats, dogs, rabbits, monkeys and mice to painful experiments that leave the animals dead or mutilated.

Animal lovers are horrified at the thought that even household pets are killed or maimed in research laboratories to test products to be offered to the public.

But animal rights activists admit they face an uphill battle to stop the practice. The Japanese health ministry supports animal experiments as a way of ensuring the safety of drugs and other products to be used by humans.

Japan’s leading cosmetics company, Shiseido, uses rabbits to test its popular line of cosmetics that shield the skin from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays.

The so-called mucous membrane irritation test involves putting chemicals directly into the eyes of rabbits which have no tear glands. Many of the animals die or go blind as a result of their ordeal in Shiseido’s laboratories.

After almost a decade of campaigning against the use of animals for such experiments, activists say they still have a long way to go before they can get the government to enact laws banning the practice.

Hundreds of thousands of pets, mostly cats and dogs, are abandoned by their owners yearly in Japan. Most rented apartments here do not allow occupants to keep pets.

Of the 950,000 animals discarded by their owners in 1991, about 60,000 were sent to laboratories to be used for experiments.

Two years ago, the Tokyo metropolitan administration led a few other prefectural governments in clamping down on the sale of abandoned pets to companies that conduct animal experiments.

But Fusaka Nogami, who heads the Japan Anti-Vivisection Association (JAVA), says the ban on the transfer of abandoned pets to laboratories cannot be counted as a major success in their campaign.

Saving 60,000 animals is only a small victory, he says, considering that several million others end up in Japanese research laboratories every year.

JAVA, which has 4,000 members, accuses Japanese universities and corporations of withholding information about what goes on inside their research laboratories.

The animal rights group, founded in 1986, has collected pictures and information indicating that about 20 millions mammals — includig at least a million dogs and cats — are used annually for experiments.

Nogami says they are now concentrating their efforts on stopping the practice of breeding animals to be used specifically for laboratory experiments.

“In Japan there is no difference between animals and people who have been arrested. In both cases they are subjected to unnecessary cruelty without any means of help,” says Kako Miyamoto of the human rights group Amnesty International.

Nogami says many of the painful animal experiments are unnecessary but are conducted anyway because of laws that make such tests an important condition before the government allows the sale of a new product.

In 1991 the health ministry banned the LD50 or acute toxicity test to determine the dose needed to kill 50 percent of test animals, one of the conditions stipulated in the country’s pharmaceutical law.

A spokesperson for the prime minister’s office explained it is difficult to enact laws that prohibit animal experiments because the government’s top priority is to guarantee the safety of drugs for humans.

“The experiments may take the lives of animals but the dilemma is based on the need to save people’s lives,” the spokesperson said.

Pharmaceutical companies voice the same opinion. A spokesperson for one firm pointed out that much progress has been made in the field of science as a result of animal tests.

But Ms Apricot, a small cosmetics company selling products that are not tested on animals, says such expensive and cruel experiments are unnecessary.

A company representative says the large funding offered by the government for research only encourages universities and pharmaceutical companies to try new experiments that involve the use of animals.

Animal rights activists are calling for a change in this system. Now that prefectural authorities have banned the use of abandoned pets in experiments, they expect to see an increase in the number of animals being bred specially for laboratories.

Says Nogami: “We want new laws that will control this practice and, at least for now, reduce animal experiments to a minimum.”