Shannon Keith: Hope for Thousands of Beagles Used in Laboratory Experiments

Species Unite

elizabeth novogratz

Philosophy, Society & Culture

5.0 • 911 Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2019

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the United States we still use millions of animals in laboratory experiments. It's a secretive industry and I think, many people are under the impression that it ended years ago. Not only is it still huge, but we test on just about every type of animal one can imagine, including dogs.

70,000 dogs a year are used in laboratory experiments and a great majority of them are beagles. The heartbreaking reason that beagles are so often the dog of choice is because they're docile, sweet, trusting, and they don't fight back. Like all laboratory animals, their lives are miserable from the time they are born until they're euthanized. They are taken from their mothers and are subjected to horrific cruelty, painful tests, torture, and then finally, when the experiment is over, they are killed.

Shannon Keith is a superhuman. She's the founder of Beagle Freedom Project, an organization that rescues and advocates for beagles as well as for many other animals who are tested on in laboratory experiments. She's is also an animal rights lawyer, activist, and documentary director/producer. She has changed laws, rescued thousands of animals, brought enormous amounts of attention and awareness to issues that have been kept secret for decades, and in her spare time, she's made three documentaries that have exposed the hidden worlds of lab testing, the fur industry, and the lives of captive primates.

I'm certain that future generations will look back on what we're currently doing to animals with shock and horror, but they'll also be able to see that there were indeed heroes amongst us: those who gave all to battle against the incredible injustices and atrocities that so many animals face every single day. Shannon is one of the heroes. Thousands of animals are alive, safe, and free because she refuses to give up the fight.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi, I'm Elizabeth Novigrat's welcome to Species Unite, the podcast where we talk to people who are fighting some of the hardest fights on Earth to stop the unnecessary suffering of animals.
0:15.0	In the United States we still test on millions of animals.
0:19.0	It's a secretive industry and I think a lot of people think that it ended years ago.
0:23.0	It didn't. It's still enormous and we test on just about any type of animal you can imagine including dogs.
0:29.0	70,000 dogs a year are used in laboratory experiments, and a great majority of them are beagles.
0:36.0	And the reason that beagles are so often the dog of choice is because they're docile,
0:40.8	they're sweet, they're trusting, and they don't fight back.
0:44.4	Like all animals used in labs, their lives are miserable from the time they're born until
0:49.5	they're euthanized.
0:50.9	They're taken from their mothers, they're subjected to horrific cruelty. They're tested on. They're tortured. And then when the experiments are over, they're killed.
0:59.0	Today's conversation is with Shannon Keith.
1:02.8	She's the founder of the Beagle Freedom Project.
1:05.4	They're an organization that rescues and advocates for Beagles,
1:08.4	as well as many other animals used in laboratory experiments.
1:12.1	Shannon is also an animal rights lawyer,
1:14.9	activist, and documentary film director and producer. animals were always my kind of closest friends and I was always rescuing them when I was little and decided that I definitely wanted a career in helping animals I just wasn't sure what it would be.
1:38.0	I went to the go-to thing which is be a veterinarian, but unfortunately my mind doesn't work that way and I'm not
1:46.6	great at math and science. So in college I just decided I was going to be an animal rights attorney. I wanted to create a world
1:56.2	where they have legal rights and they are protected. Did you find other people in law school for animal rights or was it really
2:06.0	kind of non-existent at that time? Animal rights was pretty non-existent at that time.
2:11.0	So I found another attorney who did animal law and I worked with him
2:16.1	while I was in law school but it wasn't animal rights it was just kind of
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from elizabeth novogratz, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of elizabeth novogratz and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.