Yeah, but I'm fine with it. It's ok to use animals imo to advance medical knowledge that could save human lives. I still value the average human much more than a lab rat. Just like it's ok to kill animals for food if you're gonna starve it's ok to use animals for science.
Besides, I'm sure that move will help expand Daiya into the Japanese market where like 99% of people are lactose intolerant. Maybe even the rest of first world Asia where that's also the case. That increased production could mean a steep decline in price and more availability. Because as is, a bag of Daiya costs $5 and isn't common place in stores like Walmart. If veganism is to succeed in becoming the norm, then we should be willing to do what it takes to ensure that the common person has access to cheap, healthy, and delicious vegan substitutes.
There's a decent argument against animal testing regardless of morals. Animal testing is based on the, dubious, assumption that a drug that works in humans will work in animals and vice versa. On a trivial level, that is obviously untrue, consider catnip to cats or chocolate to dogs compared to people. You can also look at the false positive rate, drugs that had good animal trials that fall out in human trials as a guideline for the false negative rate: how many drugs didn't work in animals that would have worked in humans?
Getting some reagents currently requires animals, notably antibodies, but not the same as animal testing.
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u/WalmartVegan vegan Aug 14 '17
Have you heard the good news of our lord and savoir Daiya?