Animal rights campaigners have seen change in food consumption, zoo enclosure conditions and governmental policies on a large scale on the approach to a more sustainable planet, but the quest for a cruelty-free world is not over.
Recent progress in the development of a vaccine for Covid-19 has outraged animal rights activists due to its use of horseshoe crab blood, with demands for a synthetic alternative to be used ringing out across the globe. Horseshoe crab blood, which has been used by pharmaceutical companies for years, can detect endotoxins - the toxins present inside a bacterial cell - and so is capable of identifying diseases e.g. E.Coli and salmonella.
Replicating an alternative with the exact same properties as the blood has proven difficult, however there exists a close equivalent: rFC, a synthetic alternative developed in the 1980s. Use of this alternative has been pushed for by many animal rights organisations, who argue that the global demand for the coronavirus vaccine will result in the over-harvest of horseshoe crabs, a species already listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, potentially leading to their extinction. In 2018, approximately 464,000 horseshoe crabs were harvested for their blood for the US biomedical industry, with 50,000 of these estimated to have been killed.
Scientists on the crab-harvesting scene respond to this with claims that blood extraction is harmless, and the 2003 program ensuring regulation of harvested crabs minimises the risk of endangering the species further, but many activists remain unconvinced Bella Taylor
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