Cosmetics Animal Testing

 

The issue

Traditionally, animals have been used in painful tests to demonstrate that cosmetics are effective and safe to use. Yet transferring the results of animal tests to humans has proven to be problematic and misleading in many cases.

Instead, safety can be assured by using approved tests that do not use animals, and by sticking to the many combinations of existing ingredients that have already been established as safe for human use. 

Sadly, despite the availability of alternatives, countless animals are still subjected to cruel tests around the world to bring a new eye shadow or cologne to market. In many cases, industry inertia and bureaucracy are the only barriers to switching to non-animal testing methods. It is a sad fact that the only way some companies will embrace non-animal tests is if they are legally required to do so.

The solution

In a global market it is important for all countries to ban animal testing for cosmetics to avoid testing simply moving around the world to countries with no effective laws. That’s why we launched our global campaign - to call on governments around the world to ban animal testing for cosmetics.

Animal tests are increasingly being replaced with quicker, cheaper and more reliable non-animal methods. These modern methods are more relevant to humans and have been found to predict human reactions better than the traditional outdated animal tests.

Companies can prove their products are safe by using established ingredients. There are, for example, almost 20,000 ingredients in the European Union’s database for which safety data is available.