just to go into a little more detail on animal testing in regards to pet food - we have to differentiate between two very different kinds of testing:
1. feeding trials (AAFCO protocol):
these are not mandatory, a pet food manufacturer can get their food AAFCO approved in two different ways, 1. feeding trials or 2. lab testing to assure the food meets the required nutrient profile (you can read more
here, scroll down to "Nutritional Adequacy Statement"). the only things involved with feeding trials are regular medical checkups and the dogs not eating anything but the food that's being tested for 6 months. the circumstances of these feeding trials are up to the manufacturer, they can keep their own dogs in kennels at a facility or work with breeders. theoretically they could ask dog owners like you and me to participate in a feeding trial, as long as we'd agree to feed nothing but the food that's being tested.
2. other testing:
some manufacturers do testing that is not necessary at all for pet food. they take animals and purposely damage internal organs (e.g. kidneys) or induce other illnesses artificially, only to test the effect of a particular food product on these health problems. in my opinion that is nothing but cruel, since greed and convenience are the only reasons that keep these manufacturers from doing clinical testing on animals that already suffer from certain health issues. there is no reason at all that they couldn't enlist the help of people who own animals who are treated for particular problems, and i am sure they wouldn't have any trouble at all recruiting them if they spent some of their million-dollar advertising budget - especially not in the days of TV and internet.
procter & gamble, who bought up the iams company a few years ago, has a bad reputation for unnecessary animal experiments and backtracking on promises to reduce and end such testing where it is not needed. they make big claims about spending lots of money to research viable testing alternatives and not doing invasive testing for pet food that would end in the test animals being euthanized. reality is that they have never come forward with any tangible proof whatsoever that these claims are true. on the contrary, animals from iams testing facilities have been sold to other labs after testing was finished, where more tests were performed on them and then they were killed. so yes, technically P&G/iams are not responsible for the deaths of these animals, but indirectly they are. another big gripe of mine is that iams claims test animals are adopted out or placed into a "retirement center", yet i have never heard of a single person who has adopted a former iams test animal and media has been denied access to this "retirement facility" to this day. so my question is, how bad are the conditions in this retirement center, and in what kind of shape are the animals if they have to deny access to this facility to anyone who could possibly reveal what's really going on there?