Dr Shiranee Pereira is not your average animal activist. Her typical day consists of taking care of over 1000 animals, including dogs, cats, cows, bulls, horses, monkeys and birds-animals that were victims to purposeful human violence. Apart from this, her abode near Red Hills is home to 30 odd dogs—all of them being abandoned pets. Periera is also a member of the CPCSEA (Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals), a statutory body under the Indian government. Fighting for the cause of laboratory animals in particular, she hopes to see a country devoid of vivisection.
In 2012, India banned the use of animals in dissection—a campaign initiated by Periera in 2007. India became the second Asian country to ban testing of cosmetics on animals in 2014. While this is a victory, it still does not address a lot of the existing issues. Most of the testing done in India is for the pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries. Every pesticide, fertilizer, fungicide and pain-killer in the market has been tested on animals. Due to existing regulations under animal testing, companies are forced into testing on dogs—most often beagles.
Why beagles? They are conveniently sized and their non-aggressive personalities make them ideal candidates to be used in toxicity testing. Apart from being a convenient model of testing, established in the 1940s, testing on dogs adds no more than two per cent of information than when tested on rodents.
All pet parents can vouch that dogs feel and perceive positive emotions like love and affection like any other human would. New research and studies, with evidence stemming from f MRI scans, even go on to show that a dog is as sentient and intelligent as a 2-year old child. Periera hopes that an analogy as crude and honest as this will help drive home the point.
While animal testing labs show no obvious cruelty visually (due to strict regulations on cleanliness and hygiene due to the GLP/GMP standards they maintain), Periera says that the trauma and procedures that these beagles are put through is heart wrenching. Hundreds of tests are conducted on them that affect their livers, induce seizures and most importantly cause immense levels of mental trauma. These dogs are repeatedly tested on till they collapse. With over 5,000 to 7,000 dogs used for animal testing in the country, it is of most importance to understand that this is not a small or negligible issue.
Periera believes that regulation of animal testing is not just about the three 'R's—refinement, reduction and replacement, but more importantly, rehabilitation. Beagles are notorious for being full of energy and extremely intelligent. But the dogs from the labs have spent their entire lives in captivity where their only interaction has been with gloved hands and masked faces. A lot of them are completely overwhelmed by stimuli such as sunlight, the texture of grass and even simple human interaction. Devoid of basic affection and care, these dogs have the right to lead a normal life. While eradication of animal testing is ideal, Periera says that for the time being at least reducing the number of such cases could help.
Periera launched the Sound of Silence campaign to stop the use of dogs in testing as it is inhumane, futile and expensive. She plans to take this battle forward by presenting her case with scientific, ethical and legal reasons to the regulatory authorities in India, along with the proof that even society demands this change. At the end of the day, no parent would ever want to see their child go through anything that would remotely hurt them. Neither would any pet parent.
NOTE: The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not reflect the view of THE WEEK
