Language elements and rhetorical fallacies in animal testing

Tuesday 14 June in Marseille. Entering into a massive hall, dedicated to the businesses who sell laboratory ‘materials’, from litter to transgenic animals, cages, experimental equipment, and cleaning appliances. These same businesses, the revenues for which rely exclusively on animal testing for some, are funding the FELASA Congress 2022 on the theme of ‘communication’.

Hardly surprising, in such a setting, that the ‘key messages’ put forward are the importance of this exploitation for human health, the ‘irreplaceable’ character of ‘experimental’ animals, and the constant priority that is ‘animal welfare’.

“Care culture”

The journal by STAL (Sciences et Techniques de l’Animal de Laboratoire) was published by the AFSTAL (French Association for Laboratory Animal Science & Techniques), who co-organised the congress. In Volume 50 of the journal, we found a translation of the document on “care culture”^[1], a ‘comprehensive and demonstrable institution-wide commitment”, going “beyond simple compliance with regulations in force”...

It is difficult to reconcile this new language element from the animal testing lobbies with the practice of animal testing, which confines animals for their whole lives and subjects them to suffering that has no benefit for them or that could largely be avoided if we gave ourselves the means.

Communication strategies: necessary, additional, and normal

To accompany this attempt to present themselves as benefactors, animal testing circles look to pass their practices off as trivial and clear activities that we do not need to question.

Thierry Decelle (Sanofi) therefore encourages his colleagues to hijack the debate on substitute methods by integrating them into everything, which also includes animal testing:

After all, why talk about research into substitution methods and the end of animal testing when we can ignore the problem?

Kirk Leech (Executive Director of the European animal testing lobby) maintains that in his opinion, it is better to talk about successes in animal testing rather than care or substitute methods. His goal: to influence public opinion by deluging the media with hopes of new treatments, voluntarily ignoring the horrors of animal testing and its incompatibility with moral consideration.

Apparently, the fact that these types of declarations have been made for decades to simply disappear in the archives of history without having helped anyone does not matter.

The pot calling the kettle black

In this game of bad faith, France has won the gold medal at the FELASA Congress. A special mention to a representative from CHU in Lille, who, in a dismissive manner, compared the idea of granting rights to non-human primates with animal trials in the Middle Ages.

He goes on to argue that since more than 80% of Nobel prizes have awarded research using animals, research cannot happen without animals. We wonder what he thinks of the fact that more than 90% of Nobel prizes have rewarded men…

After these enormities which did not make the experimenters react on the spot, it is difficult not to laugh grudgingly when a lobbyist for the umpteenth time reproaches their bad faith in the animal activists who film practices of abuse in laboratories to reveal only a few minutes of video to the general public.

Bad faith is wrong – but only when it comes from their opponents.

^[1]The word care has several meanings. To care about means to be interested in or concerned about someone or something. To care for and to take care of, mean to be concerned about something or to take care of someone. As a noun, care can bring attention to a task to be done correctly, or the care necessary for health or for protecting someone.

This article is the second in a series which will present different aspects of the FELASA 2022 congress

1. Transparency and communication strategies in animal testing
2. Language elements and rhetorical fallacies in animal testing
3. The animal testing industry makes propaganda
4. The ethical short-sightedness of animal testing
5. Will there soon be more primates in laboratories?

Translated from the French by Joely Justice