What You Might Not Know
Specimen
Acquisition
Mink Farming
Minks are often used for dissection in
upper-level biology classrooms, the cadavers being the by-product
of fur farming.
The animal suffering associated with mink farming is well-documented.
Minks often engage in self-mutilation and cannibalism due to
their lack of stimuli, separation from natural behaviors, and
inhumane conditions. (United Kingdom's Report on the Welfare
of Farmed Mink and Foxes in Relation to Housing and Management
1998)
Minks, as aquatic animals, are capable of holding their breath
for very long periods of time, which prolongs their painful
death by gassing. Other methods of killing include "twisting
the animal's neck until it breaks" or injecting them with inexpensive
chemicals often diluted with alcohol. (HSUS)
Both Britain and the Netherlands are poised to ban mink farming
for "ethical reasons." (Farm Animal Welfare Council)
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Hog Farming
Fetal pigs are harvested from slaughtered
sows who are pregnant yet often mistakenly believed unproductive.
People often justify the use of fetal pigs for dissection
because they would ultimately be discarded after their mothers
are slaughtered. (Carolina Biological Supply Company, Nebraska
Scientific) This, however, does not alleviate the pain and
suffering pigs experience daily at the hands of factory farms.
"[Pigs] are managed like raw materials in a typical industrial
factory." (Hogwatch) Sows are kept in extremely cramped conditions,
often suffering from back and pelvic fractures, until they
are sometimes unsuccessfully stunned and therefore conscious
when their throats are slit. (HSUS)
The contamination of waterways with the runoff from hog farms
has killed dozens of species of wildlife. (US Senate Committee
on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry December 1997)
In North Carolina alone hog farms produce 19 million tons
of waste a year. (Hogwatch)
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Stolen Pets
and Class B Dealers
National animal welfare and animal
rights organizations' investigations document that many cats
dissected in America's classrooms today are stolen from owners
or captured off the streets and sold, alive, to biological
supply companies.
In Mexico, children are given $1 for every cat they catch.
These cats, often stolen from their homes, are drowned sometimes
10 to a bag or their throats are slit. (Boston Globe
1994 and The Associated Press 1995)
"We have irrefutable evidence that the cats cruelly killed
in Mexico were going to American biological supply firms who
supply public schools with animals for dissection," states
John Walsh of the World Society for the Protection of Animals.
(Cat Fancy 1995)
In 1990, an undercover investigation of well-known biological
supply companies documented Class B licensed dealers delivering
hundreds of live cats of unknown origin to those companies.
Undercover footage (available for viewing) exposed animal
suffering including skull bashing, pummeling with a steel
hook, and embalming cats while still living.
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September 2000
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