EnviroLink Forum

Hey guys, what are your opinions on animal pesticide testing?

There are some new alternatives emerging that look pretty promising.

There is a sequence of legal requirements and laboratory tests that has to be followed before a pesticide/drug/anything that may be consumed or in contact with humans (or animals!) will be given approval to be used (and even then, there will often be a sequence of "field" trials before approval for general release is given, including trials on humans). It is in these intial tests that do not use whole animals that many substances are already weeded out (pardon the pun) because they turn out be toxic. But after that, more demanding tests are needed. Included in that sequence will be testing on animals, initially, using cell culture or "lower" animals like fruitflies, worms or zebrafish, but , eventually, testing on "higher" vertebrates including mammals. Those are the rules. That said, alternatives to some of that live animal use are continuously sought (I say "to some" because eventually, testing in all the complexity of a real living organism is still needed); you may have heard of the "three Rs", reduction, refinement, replacement, which apply to animal research and testing equally. However, before alternatives can be used, first of all, they must be proven to really work, that is, be a true alternative. Second, such an alternative must then be approved by law for use in testing - otherwise the final product will not be given legal permission for release. I am not sure what you intended with your question, since it is a bit troll-like. Who wants (or even, in law, be allowed) to use animals in research or testing (and you know, of course, that animals are still protected in that use!) if there are alternatives? Quite apart from the moral and ethical concerns, animals are simply very expensive and need looking after, including nights and weekends - who would not prefer a tissue culture? OTOH, it will probably always be a legal requirement that a final testing phase involves intact animals - including (as many anti-animal users do not seem to know) that animal we want to also protect, Homo sapiens.

There is another question, that may be implicit in your: do we need another pesticide? The answer is probably yes, because the pests that eat our crops and other plants needed for a still increasing human population (and their animals) adapt to resist pesticides. And don't start the "let's all go organic" argument. Organic farmers use pesticides too, they just claim these are not "chemicals".

I hope there are alternatives that are promising. I don't know whether many of the ones previously approved, then taken off the market, or not, were tested on animals. They certainly, in many cases, were not tested enough, or tested for breakdown products or just what would happen to them in nature, from runoff, to groundwater. Was DDT tested enough? NO. In one year in Mesa County, CO, 35 wells were shut down from too high of pesticide residues in their well water. Many have been found to be extremely long lived and some of the organo-phosphates linked to prion diseases. Herbicides and pesticides have been found in many municipal water supplies, with long term low dose and interactions with other pollutants like pharmaceuticals unknown! WE are the guinea pigs!!!
I'll never forget back when I was a crop sprayer in Bottineau County NoDak in 1972. I was in too much of a hurry to put on rubber gloves in mixing Toxaphene for a small field grasshopper plague. One small drop got on my hand and I just wiped it off and washed my hands. The field was surrounded by telephone and power lines, requiring very good timing. When I was on my second pass, I started feeling woozy and weird. I circled for 15 minutes then decided to go back and get the field later. I was poisoned too much to fly any more until the afternoon when the effects finally wore off. I learned several lessons, needless to say. Sure, I saved the county from the grasshopper plague that year. I knew how fast they could take out a 60 acre field (half a day). I thought about how strong that stuff was and what did exactly happen to the residue?? Probably to the nearest river and down to the ground water eventually. I thought about the 2-4-D herbicide, too. Sure, I could identify 6 different noxious weeds at 90 mph low level and use the right mixture for each for maximum yields of wheat and oats. I sprayed Malathion on homesteads for pest control.
I wondered a lot more a few years later when I finally read "Silent Spring" and realized I had been part of the problem. Someone else would have done it if I didn't.
I use Neem oil, soap and water for my plants, and hand pull weeds, but that is for small scale cottage farming/home gardening. Overpopulation demands more and more food, that requires more and more insecticides and herbicides, more and more artificial fertilizers with high amounts of impurities and the diminished returns effect of all used more and more. Soils sterilized by the chemicals, surface and ground water unsafe from them, and chemists and genetic scientists trying for more chemicals and GM crops to keep up, and they just can't.
We are coming off a long plateau and heading toward decline in total food production as pollution builds to unknown toxicity. The soils can only take so much chemical abuse, and all the testing methods of the past and present, have not detected the various effects seen. Soil ruin and water ruin, were not seen, and neither were the 100 expanding estuary dead zones. Long term effects and chemical interactions could not be seen, no matter what animals were used in testing. The soils, the waterways, the groundwater, attached and overlapping species niches, and people, became the test animals and labs.

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"With every decision, think seven generations ahead of the consequences of your actions" Ute rule of life.
“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”
― Chief Seattle

i think that its the important thing because in some countries this is big problem because the animals eats the plants and the plants are the pesticides because the spray of the pesticide liquid do on the plants so when the mammals eat this plants which the pesticide are entered in the mammals so the humans when eat these animals or the milk of the animals which are very dangerous for the humans.so we have to care about this things.

Animal pesticide testing. How else are you going to determine how well the pesticide works?

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TANG SOO!

I fear that most pesticides are NOT tested on animals. A pesticide came out and caused so much death of rodents in the fields that most birds of prey had a sharp decline in numbers when the pesticide was used. Took a couple years for researchers to figure out why the birds were starving. Now, most countries have banned that particular pesticide (meant to kill grasshoppers) but several rodent species have not been seen since that release year and are feared extinct and many endangered bird species have only now stopped declining in numbers (and may be too low to recover). They only were worried about cattle eating the sprayed crops and the cows did not seem to be affected... they did not care for the wildlife. So, a few hundred rodents suffer lab testing or a few billion rodents die in the fields and their predators go extinct... I prefer the lab testing please.

What I was getting at, I thought clearly, was that pests are animals.

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TANG SOO!

Do I hear a slogan in there?

"Pests are animals too."

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With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

Yeah, don't they have rights too...or is it only when convenient?

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TANG SOO!

Animals are "pests" ..... in your world? Really?

If animals are pests ..... then "pest-a-cide" it truly is. Let's get rid of all those "pests"!

Yuck .... animals. Don't you just hate them?

The changing of wording also changes meaning.

"Pests are animals" and "animals are pests" carry two separate and distinct ideas. One is a statement of fact and the other a strawman fallacy.

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

And the rest of the strawman fallacy follows ......

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

Some are, some aren't. Depends on how humans are inconvenienced, I suppose. As for pesticide testing, I'd personally like to know whether or not a product will function as intended with minimal risk to non-target species before mass producing it. I'm sure some prefer putting something out that doesn't work as well as before with a higher risk to non-pests. Some folks are just stupid that way.

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TANG SOO!