Montserrat Melendez Mejia

Professional Bio

Montserrat Melendez Mejia is a Food Engineer who works with Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey to become an entrepreneur which her own company of nutritional supplements, with the help of her career she will develop a company that helps Mexican population be healthier without having to pay prices that are not accessible for most of the population.
Montserrat believes in hard work, honesty, and perseverance. She believes that people who work hard can achieve everything they want to do and that anything that is done with honesty and for the right cause is a good job. And last but not least, perseverance is the key to achieving your goals and everything that you want to do.
In addition, Montserrat has worked at Grupo Sirilo, in the customer service area where she had had the opportunity to develop her customer relations skills and watch in firsthand how a successful business model works.
In conclusion, Montserrat wants to become a successful food engineer and wants to specialize in the nutrition area of the food industry and being an important part in the lives of many people around the world with the help of her job.

Inicio: Sobre mí

VIDEO CV

Inicio: Portafolio

The truth of animal Testing

Expository essay

EVAP- Anel Torres

Lidia Guadalupe Vázquez Zúñiga A01700801

Montserrat Meléndez Mejia A01701871

The truth of Animal Testing

Whether it is called animal testing, animal experimentation or animal research, it refers to the experimentation carried out on animals. It is used to assess the safety and effectiveness of everything from medication to cosmetics, as well as understanding how the human body works. Cruelty Free International Organization defines animal testing as any scientific experiment or test in which a live animal is forced to live something that is likely to cause them pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm.

Different companies use different animals depending on the product they are testing, but rats, mice, fish, amphibians and birds are not defined as animals under animal experiments regulations, that means no legal permission to experiment on them is required and they are not included in any statistics. The animals used in experiments are usually bred for this purpose by the laboratory or in breeding facilities, this means no animals are hunted, they are specifically bred for testing purposes.

There are different areas where animal testing is done, one of them is for fundamental research, which is designed to answer scientific questions that animal researchers speculate might be useful medically in the future. Fundamental biological research constitutes the most common use of animals in experiments around the world. Therefore another purpose for animal testing is genetically modified animals, they consists of mice or other animals being bred with specific genes inserted into the cells of their bodies. This is principally used for detecting how certain genes cause different kinds of diseases, and mimicing the complexity of how certain diseases are actually caused in humans.

Not only are time, money and animals’ lives being wasted (with a huge amount of suffering), but effective treatments are being mistakenly discarded and harmful treatments are getting through. Despite many decades of studying conditions such as cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, stroke and AIDS in animals, we do not yet have reliable and fully effective cures. Here are the top reasons why animal testing is wasteful and dangerous:

-Animal testing is cruel and inhumane. Animals can suffer like humans do.

According to Humane Society International, animals used in experiments are commonly subjected to force feeding, forced inhalation, food and water deprivation, prolonged periods of physical restraint, the infliction of burns and other wounds to study the healing process, the infliction of pain to study its effects and remedies.

-Harms humans. Animals are very different from human beings and therefore make poor test subjects.

A recent drug trial in France resulted in the death of one volunteer and left four others severely brain damaged in 2016. The drug, which was intended to treat a wide range of conditions including anxiety and Parkinson’s disease, was tested in four different species of animals (mice, rats, dogs and monkeys) before being given to humans.

- Animal tests do not reliably predict results in human beings. 90% of drugs fail in human trials despite promising results in animal tests – whether on safety grounds or because they do not work. Despite the use of over 115 million animals in experiments globally each year, only 46 new medicines were approved in 2017 by the leading drug regulator, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Alternative testing methods now exist that can replace the need for animals and they are often cheaper, quicker and more effective. Replacing animal testing will improve the quality as well as the humaneness of our science. Some examples are:

Scientists have managed to coax cells to grow into 3D structures, such as miniature human organs, which can provide a more realistic way to test new therapies.
Artificial human skin, made from sheets of human skin cells grown in test tubes or plastic wells, can produce more useful results than testing chemicals on animal skin.
Computer models, such as virtual reconstructions of human molecular structures, can predict the toxicity of substances without invasive experiments on animals.

The harmful use of animals in experiments is not only cruel but also often ineffective. Animals do not get many of the human diseases. Instead, signs of these diseases are artificially induced in animals in laboratories in an attempt to mimic the human disease. These unfair and extreme processes often lead to the death of the animal being tested on. Even in the rare case that the animal don’t die, they will still have to cope with the physical harm and mental pain that will remain with them for eternity as a result of these cruel forms of testing.

References

Cruently Free International. Take action for animals. (2015). Retrieved from https://www.crueltyfreeinternational.org/why-we-do-it/arguments-against-animal-testing

DoSomething.org Animals testing (2019). Retrieved from https://www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-about-animal-testing

Murnaghan, I. (2019, March 22). What is animal Testing? Retrieved from http://www.aboutanimaltesting.co.uk/what-animal-testing.html

ProCon.org Pros and Cons of current issues. Animals used for scientific and commercial testing (2017) https://animal-testing.procon.org

Inicio: Sobre mí

Infographic Animal Testing

Inicio: Bienvenido

The truth of Animal Testing

Argumentative essay

EVAP- Anel Torres

Lidia Guadalupe Vázquez Zúñiga A01700801

Montserrat Meléndez Mejia A01701871

The truth of animal testing

Whether it is called animal testing, animal experimentation or animal research, it refers to the experimentation carried out on animals. It is used to assess the safety and effectiveness of everything from medication to cosmetics, as well as understanding how the human body works. Cruelty-Free International Organization defines animal testing as any scientific experiment or test in which a live animal is forced to live something that is likely to cause them pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm. That is why in this text, we are going to expose why animal testing should be prohibited worldwide because although it has helped to find cures for several diseases it is not reliable and just harms animals.

Although some articles mention that animal testing has contributed to science breakthroughs along history just like The California Biomedical Research Association states in an article where they mention that nearly every medical breakthrough in the last 100 years has resulted directly from research using animals. Experiments in which dogs had their pancreases removed led directly to the discovery of insulin, critical to saving the lives of diabetics. The polio vaccine, tested on animals, reduced the global occurrence of the disease from 350,000 cases in 1988 to 27 cases in 2016. (CBRA, 2015). There exist several scientific discoveries in which no animals were killed or harmed, in an article Humane Research Australia (HRA) reports that many discoveries made by non-animal methods were later verified by animal experiments, "giving false credit" to animal use, so there is proof that scientific breakthroughs don’t need animals to make them valid or give them some credibility

In addition, just like said before the drugs that pass animal tests are not necessarily safe because animals are very different from human beings, we have cellular differences in between, so that makes poor models for testing human products. Paul Furlong, Professor of Clinical Neuroimaging at Aston University (UK), states that "it's very hard to create an animal model that even equates closely to what we're trying to achieve in the human." An example was the case in which animal tests on the arthritis drug Vioxx showed that it had a protective effect on the hearts of mice, yet the drug went on to cause more than 27,000 heart attacks and sudden cardiac deaths before being pulled from the market (PCRM, 2005). But there are allegations saying that some cosmetics and health care products have to be tested on animals first to ensure the products are safe, Animals are not Ours Organization states that some companies test on animals to provide data that they can use to defend themselves when they are sued by injured consumers, if cosmetics or household products blind or poison animals during tests, they are often marketed anyway. Notably this is a strategy of different companies to help them not sued by infected or sick customers, the companies need to have a back up so they can get away with having their products in the market. (PETA, 2017)

Due to innovations in science, the development of alternative methods is growing. Animal tests are being replaced in areas such as toxicity testing, neuroscience and drug development. Kara Rogers, Britannica’s life sciences editor, Ph.D. in pharmacology and toxicology from the University of Arizona, in her essay Alternatives for Animal Testing explains how vitro testing, such as studying cell cultures in a petri dish, can produce more relevant results than animal testing because human cells can be used. Also, she talks on how another method called microdosing, which is the administering of doses too small to cause adverse reactions, can be used in human volunteers, whose blood is then analyzed.

Despite this, California Biomedical Research Association (CBRA) affirms that the use of animals in research is essential to the development of new and more effective methods for diagnosing and treating diseases that affect both humans and animals as there is no adequate alternative to testing on a living, whole-body system. “Studying cell cultures in a petri dish, while sometimes useful, does not provide the opportunity to study interrelated processes occurring in the central nervous system, endocrine system, and immune system (CBRA, 2013)”.

Artificial human skin, such as the commercially available products EpiDerm and ThinCert, are proving that products that are made from sheets of human skin cells grown in test tubes or plastic wells and can produce more useful results than testing chemicals on animal skin. (Rogers, 2007)

In conclusion, testing of products on animals is completely unnecessary because viable alternatives are available. However, many people believe that animal testing is justified because the animals are sacrificed to make products safer for human use and consumption. The problem with this reasoning is that the animals' safety, well-being, and quality of life is generally not a consideration. Animals do not get many of the human diseases. Instead, signs of these diseases are artificially induced in animals in laboratories in an attempt to mimic the human disease.

Animal testing should be prohibited because it violates animals' rights, it causes pain and suffering to the experimental animals, and other means of testing product toxicity are available. They should be treated with respect and dignity, because after all, humans are animals too.

References

California Biomedical Research Association, "CBRA Fact Sheet: Why Are Animals Necessary in Biomedical Research?," www.ca-biomed.org

Cruently Free International. Take action for animals. (2015). Retrieved from https://www.crueltyfreeinternational.org/why-we-do-it/arguments-against-animal-testing

Humane Research Australia (HRA), "Medical Research," humaneresearch.org.au, Jan. 2006

https://www.peta.org/about-peta/faq/why-do-companies-continue-to-test-products-on-animals/

Kara Rogers, "Scientific Alternatives to Animal Testing: A Progress Report," britannica.com, Sep. 17, 2007

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), "Vioxx Tragedy Spotlights Failure of Animal Research," pcrm.org, Mar. 2005

ProCon.org Pros and Cons of current issues. Animals used for scientific and commercial testing (2017) https://animal-testing.procon.org

Inicio: Sobre mí

Letter of intent

April 26, 2018

Montserrat Meléndez Mejía

Milenio III

Santiago de Querétaro, México.

To:

Department of Food Science

Cork University

Dublin, Ireland

RE: Application for Master’s Degree in Innovation in Food Science

Dear Food Science Department:

I am very interested in being a student of the Master’s Degree in Innovation in Food Science at Cork University. I have reviewed the different programs with the same characteristics and none is comparable with the academic offer and the level of specialization offered by this program. I chose to apply to this program because it is the perfect fit for my interests, hobbies and future plans.

I am currently studying at Tec de Monterrey the career of food engineering, where I am graduating in 4 years, I know this is an early application but I don’t want to miss an opportunity like this , I want to specialize in creation and development of new products. I am very interested in the nutrition and innovation areas that’s why my studies will inlcude both of this specialities. My goal is to create a product which helps people be healthier and have a better lifestyle and at the same time enjoy a tasteful product.

Currently I am working in the customer service area in Grupo Sirilo, where I have had the opportunity to watch in first hand how a succesfull business model Works, I worked too as a kitchen assistant where I had to do the whole inventory, in addition I had to do the orders for the suppliers and of course the meal preparation. Both Jobs taught me to know what the customers want and how tu fulfill their needs. I consider myself a very orginazed person, as well as someone who can handle perfectly stressfull situations, loves to help people, is patient and hardworking, for all of this reasons is why I would be a perfect addition to your program.

Finally I just wanted to thank you for taking the time of considering my application, I am very enthusiastic on being a part of your team, I will be waiting for a response in my email (A01701871@itesm.mx) or even a phone call at 422330561. I am really looking forward to hear from you son.

Sincerely,

Montserrat Melendez Mejia.

Inicio: Cita

Aptitudes

I am very organized, I know how to handle stressful situations, I see myself as a social, kind and honest person. I consider myself very creative and pretty good at collaborative activities.