Animal Rescue Stories : Two Rescued Rabbits Finally Step Outside After Life Spent in Lab Cages (PHOTOS)

While animal-free experimentation alternatives do exist and are being increasingly advocated for, testing on animals is still prevalent. According to the Humane Society of the United States, more than 25 million vertebrate animals, from dogs and cats to rats and mice, are used in research, testing, and education in the U.S. every year.
Of these 25 million or so, 200,000 of them are rabbits, as the United States Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has reported in filings.
Most rabbits are used in toxicity testing, such as the painful Draize eye and skin irritancy tests during which a rabbit is “locked into full-body restraints to prevent them from touching eye or skin sores,” the American Anti-Vivisection Society (AAVS) reports.
Rabbits are also known to be used to test pyrogenicity, the ability of a product to induce a fever, and for development or embryotoxcity tests, which aim to determine “the danger that a product will harm a pregnant female of developing fetus,” AAVS explains.
Despite all their service to testing facilities, rabbits rarely receive any kindness in laboratories. AAVS states that the lab environment is “particularly noxious to rabbits, causing great stress, weakening their immune systems, and making them more prone to illness.”
What’s more, these rabbits seldom leave their cages, except for testing procedures, and are often never provided with enrichment or any sort of comfort.
Beagle Freedom Project, a rescue, foster, and adoption program with the nonprofit Animal Rescue, Media and Education (ARME) based in Los Angeles, Calif., has taken in and cared for a number of lab rabbits over the years through retirement agreements with laboratories.
Kevin Chase, Beagle Freedom Project’s director of operations, tells OGP that they have even sent letters to every U.S. cosmetics and household product company that still uses animals for testing, asking that they surrender their research animals after terminating their studies to allow them to be put up for adoption.
Beagle Freedom Project
It was this type of agreement that allowed Beagle Freedom Project to rescue rabbits, Bun and Honey. They are just two of eight rabbits who the project has saved over the last 18 months.

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• Combat medic Joshua Bisnar found them while raking volleyball court at Camp Pendleton in San Diego, California

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By Nick Enoch   PUBLISHED: 15:03 EST, 20 June 2013 | UPDATED: 16:23 EST, 20 June 2013   A U.S. Marine medic, previously stationed in Afghanistan, was able to use his field skills back home... when he came to the rescue of four orphaned rabbits. Joshua Bisnar, a Naval Hospital Corpsman, found the helpless bunnies alongside their dead mother while he was raking the volleyball court at Camp Pendleton, in San Diego, California, where he was stationed with a Marine Corps unit. He scooped up the animals and carefully placed them in a makeshift home - consisting of a box with a few old shirts to make it more comfortable.

Combat medic Joshua Bisnar found four helpless baby rabbits alongside their dead mother while he was raking the volleyball court at Camp Pendleton, California

 

Clearly a fan of guitar players, the U.S. Marine named them James (after Jimi Hendrix), Steven, Raymond and Vaughan (after Stevie Ray Vaughan)

 

To feed them, he researched a formula mixed with probiotic he found at Petco pet store and purchased four small droppers to administer the formula into the hungry mouths three times a day. And clearly a fan of guitar players, he named them James (after Jimi Hendrix), Steven, Raymond and Vaughan (after Stevie Ray Vaughan). Bisnar said: 'I would feed them at about 6am before work, 12pm at lunch and 6pm.   'I was so scared to go to work or leave them alone, I should have given them to a wildlife sanctuary but I was scared that the car ride would be too traumatic but It was amazing how fast they grew up. 'They got out of that ugly newborn phase and started looking like fluffy little bunnies after one week.

Mr Bisnar scooped up the animals and carefully placed them in a makeshift home - consisting of a box with a few old shirts to make it more comfortable

   












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