Variations: no animal testing, we are against animal testing
Although the “cruelty-free” and “no animal testing” labels suggest that no animal testing was done
on the product or its ingredients, you may be surprised to learn that no legal definitions of these
claims exist and no independent organization verifies them. In fact, it is common for manufacturers
whose products bear these labels to commission outside laboratories to conduct tests on animals to
prove that they themselves do not conduct animal tests. Cruelty-free has nothing to do with green
beauty and should not be mistaken for it, even though organic manufacturers steer clear of animal
testing in any form.
Animal testing is a big business that kills up to 100 million animals every year, according to the
British newspaper the Guardian in 2005. And the worst part is that most of them die for nothing. It’s
true that many groundbreaking scientific and medical discoveries were made thanks to animals,
including the development of penicillin, organ transplants, the poliomyelitis vaccine, not to mention
the famous Pavlov’s dogs, the first cloned animal, Dolly the sheep, and dog Laika, the first animal to
travel in space. Finding a new pain-reducing treatment for burn victims or a new flu vaccine is one
thing; involving animals in testing a new shimmery base for lip-glosses is another. Besides, more and
more scientists today insist that animal testing of cosmetics is indisputably cruel and inhumane and
does not always prove the safety of cosmetic ingredients.
During a series of experiments on animals, scientists establish in which concentrations particular
chemicals are safe for use. Scientists try to measure the levels of skin irritancy, eye tissue damage,
and toxicity caused by various cosmetic ingredients. To test for irritancy, they perform the Draize test,
during which caustic substances are placed in the eyes of rabbits to see how much damage can be
done to their sensitive eye tissues. This test is extremely painful for the rabbits, which often scream
and sometimes break their necks trying to wiggle out of restraints.
Another test performed to evaluate the safety of cosmetics is the lethal dosage (LD) test. During
this test, researchers try to figure out the amount of a substance that will kill a predetermined ratio of
animals. For example, in the LD50 test, animals are forced to ingest poisonous substances, most often
through stomach tubes, until half of them die. Common reactions to lethal dosage tests include
convulsions, vomiting, paralysis, and bleeding from the eyes, nose, mouth, or rectum.
What amazes me most is the logic of product developers who order such tests: if they already know
that the chemical is irritating, toxic, or lethal, why kill animals and waste time and money to find out
how much of this deadly stuff they can legally stuff into a new cosmetic product? If animals develop
serious diseases and even die from this substance, why does anyone need to determine whether this
chemical is safe for humans if we dilute it with water or another chemical? If you already know it is
toxic and/or irritating, why use it in cosmetics at all? There are more than eight thousand chemical
substances that are recognized as safe—why continue loading beauty products with yet another deadly
chemical cocktail?
Animal tests don’t always predict human risks. Each living species reacts differently to various
substances. Pet lovers know that certain human foods are poisonous to animals due to their body
chemistry. For example, you should not feed pork, onions, grapes, or macadamia nuts to dogs, while
aspirin is poisonous to cats. Some substances that are toxic to humans didn’t have any adverse effects
on animals during tests. One of them, thalidomide (kevadon), a sedative used to treat insomnia, was
developed in the 1960s. The drug was put on the market after extensive animal tests didn’t show any
toxicity. After thalidomide was approved for treatment of depression, it caused severe birth
abnormalities. Starting in 1962, there were reports of thousands of children born deformed, and many