If you’re a regular visitor to PETA.org—and if you aren’t, bookmark it now—you may have noticed something different: PETA’s motto has changed.
It now reads, “Animals are not ours to experiment on, eat, wear, use for entertainment, or abuse in any other way.”
Why shift experimentation to the beginning?
After PETA’s 38 years of dedicated, determined activism, vegan foods and cruelty-free clothing are hotter than ever and more and more circuses that exploit animals are hanging up their bullhooks and whips and shutting down. But despite all the progress that we’re making with your help, millions of animals are still dying in horrific experiments, and the push to end them needs to be front and center.
Right now, millions of mice, rabbits, monkeys, dogs, and other animals are locked inside barren cages, socially isolated and psychologically traumatized. They languish in pain, tremble in fear, and ache with loneliness—and because they’re denied everything that’s natural and important to them, they spin in circles, rip out their fur, bite themselves, and exhibit other neurotic types of behavior.
Abused for archaic biology lessons, inferior medical training, obscene curiosity-driven experiments, and unreliable chemical, drug, food, and cosmetics tests, animals are immobilized for hours in restraining devices and forced to inhale toxic fumes. Holes are drilled into their skulls, their skin is burned off, or their spinal cords are crushed.
Animals aren’t laboratory equipment— they’re thinking, feeling beings who, like us, experience fear and pain, want to be left in peace, and have families. These experiments aren’t just cruel. The vast majority of them don’t contribute to improving human health, and their value to most medical advances is questionable at best.
PETA will always work to end any and all exploitation and abuse of all animals —from the smallest to the largest and the most popular to the most maligned. While the change to our motto is a sure sign of the successes that we’ve had together, we must do even more to end cruel experiments on animals.
What You Can Do
Spread the word. Tell your family and friends what’s happening in laboratories, sign up for PETA’s action alerts so that you can take quick action to help animals used in experimentation, and always point people to our searchable Beauty Without Bunnies global database so that they can ensure that the products they use are cruelty-free.
