222 HUMANE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS USED IN RESEARCH 
The National Catholic Society for Animal Welfare urges enactment 
of legislation requiring the humane treatment of laboratory animals 
for these reasons. 
First, laboratory animals are now without protection from cruelty 
and suffering. The anticruelty laws of the States are hopelessly 
inadequate to insure the humane treatment of hundreds of millions 
used experimentally each year in this country. 
As the Congress found in the case of the slaughter of meat animals, 
where vast numbers of animals are involved, cruelty and suffering 
are widespread and the anticruelty laws of the States are inadequate 
to achieve reform. A Federal law is obviously and urgently needed. 
Second, cruelty and suffering are indeed widespread in experimenta- 
tion on animals today. The conditions that cry out for reform are 
not limited to those in the housing or feeding of the animals. The 
foremost need of laboratory animals is for humane treatment during 
and after experimentation. Pain relieving care often is lacking. 
The nature of the experiments themselves is frequently grossly cruel, 
causing pain, fear, and every conceivable form of suffering. 
I might mention in passing, Mr. Chairman, that the National Cath- 
olic Society for Animal Welfare is not an antivivisentionist organiza- 
tion. We are opposed, as the vast majority of people are, to cruelty 
whereaver it occurs. We believe also that cruelty to animals in re- 
search, out of the philosophy that the end justifies any means what- 
soever, or as the result of neglect or careless indifference to their 
suffering, degrades mankind and impedes serious research. 
Animals are being subjected to pain, fear, and every possible form 
of suffering. They are being beaten, starved, burned, frozen, blinded, 
drowned, forced to swim and run until they die, accelerated deprived 
of sleep, irradiated, skinned, and subjected to other methods of in- 
ducing pain and fear in infinite variety. Nor is their suffering limited 
to that inflicted during the experiment. Often after undergoing 
excruciating painful procedures, they are given little or no post- 
experimental care to relieve their pain and terror. 
In most laboratories, the animals are simply returned to a wire 
bottom cage to suffer, unattended. 
Many of the researchers reports in medical journals specify that 
no pain relieving care was given. 
It is not unusual to find animals housed in cramped cages, without 
even a solid place on which to sit or lie, for as long as 5 or even 10 
years. They are deprived of exercise, sun light, companionship. 
They may in some cases be forced to lie in their own filth. 
The conditions under which animals are being abused in research 
constitute the most intense and shameful of all the nationwide 
cruelties to animals. 
Mr. Chairman, without further delay, I wish to state the views of 
the National Catholic Society for Animal Welfare on legislation now 
before this committee. 
Following is a pertinent part of the resolution adopted by the 
society’s board of directors in July 1960. 
The increasing volume and intensity of animal suffering resulting from prac- 
tices that exceed the limits of the licitness in experimentation, causing it fre- 
quently to degenerate into a mere torturing of animals, leads the National 
Catholic Society for Animal Welfare to believe that legislation governing the 
use of animals for experimental purposes is urgently needed. Laws to compel 
