Ontario, Canada just delivered a huge victory for dogs and cats by
banning researchers from performing invasive medical experiments on them. The new legislation also bans the breeding of dogs and cats for research.
Worldwide,
around 190 million animals are subjected to incredible horrors inside experimentation labs, and in 2024, Canada was responsible for about
3.7 million animals enduring such experiments. Now, though, the province of Ontario is stepping forward and protecting these beloved companion animals.
Sign the petition to demand that the rest of Canada follow Ontario's lead and ban testing on dogs and cats!The new law comes out of a secretive laboratory at an Ontario hospital, where dogs were held captive so that researchers could produce heart attacks in them. The induced heart attacks would continue for as long as 3 hours before researchers would finally kill the animals, cut out their hearts for further research, and dispose of the bodies. When two whistleblowers broke the news, Canadians were outraged and protested outside the hospital until the lab was shut down.
The thing is - these types of experiments aren't only unspeakably cruel,
but they're also largely quite ineffective for human medical purposes. Out of all drugs that are tested on animals and then proceed to human trials,
90% fail. That's an outrageous failure rate. Meanwhile, alternative options exist that are
both more humane and more accurate - but funders haven't been very interested in investing.
One way to ensure funding flows where it should - to developing these more successful and cruelty-free alternatives - is to prevent laboratories from torturing dogs and cats for these often unhelpful experiments. That's why we need more laws like the one in Ontario.
Under Ontario's law, not only can laboratories not invasively experiment on dogs or cats or breed them for research. They also can't euthanize and dispose of any dogs or cats they've already locked up; instead, labs must work with adoption and rehabilitation programs to provide these animals with a better future. Corporations that break the law can be fined up to $1 million, and individuals could be fined up to $260,000 as well as face two years in jail.
Sign the petition to tell Canadian lawmakers that they must pass a nationwide version of Ontario's law to protect cats and dogs! They are sentient, feeling family members - not objects to be tortured and then discarded.