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While animal rights groups such as PETA advocate abolishing all animal testing that inflicts pain on animals, proponents of testing cite laws and regulations, which minimize pain and discomfort. PETA's position is based on the belief that "humans are not superior to animals (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals)." The vice president of the Humans Society of the United States (HSUS), an animal rights group that is nearly as extreme as PETA, has been quoted as saying "the life of an ant and that of my child should be granted equal consideration (Americans for Medical Progress 2). If, as PETA and HSUS say, animal and human life is equal, then putting an animal through any pain is immoral. However, there are laws in place to minimize discomfort and inhumane treatment. The laws limit the amount of distress and pain an animal is subjected to. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the body that governs animal testing, must approve all tests (United States Department of Agriculture 2). The USDA must also authorize the numbers and types of animals experimented on (United States Department of Agriculture 2). Tests can no longer be performed if conclusive data is already available. In 1991 it was discovered that Procter and Gamble had performed experiments on 300 guinea pigs when the data the tests was to obtain was already available ("Animal Testing by the Cosmetic Industry" 2). This is just one of the situations that newer animal testing legislation would have prevented or at least deterred. A fifty-point criterion for assessing pain is in place (United States Department of Agriculture 3). These points include everything from vocalization of pain to apparent depression. If there is no clear criteria then it is "assumed that procedures that cause pain in humans also cause pain in animals (United States Department of Agriculture 50). When an animal must be restrained it is to be limited to brief periods of around three minutes (United States Department of Agriculture 3).
