Most people agree that testing cosmetics on animals is inhumane and unnecessary, right? And of course animal testing has mostly been phased out, right?
Wrong, wrong, wrong!
Statistics available at the Choose Cruelty Free (CFF) website show that a staggering 6.4 million animals in Australia were used in cosmetics testing in 2004.
There are plenty of alternatives available, such as computer modelling, in vitro testing and using human volunteers, so why does the cruel, often torturous, practice of animal testing continue?
There’s no legal requirement to test on animals, believe it or not. They test on animals not so much to protect you in case you have a reaction to a cosmetics ingredient, but to protect the cosmetics companies in case you sue them.
If concern for consumers is so important to these companies, why do they continue to use potentially dangerous substances in their products, chemicals they believe are so potentially toxic as to warrant testing on animals before coming into contact with humans?
It’s all a load of BS if you ask me. Hundreds of companies worldwide don’t test their cosmetics on animals, and we’d love to see a total ban on animal testing.
Mukti Organic Skincare has never tested on animals and has never needed to. We only use natural (95–100% certified organic) ingredients that have been tried and tested on humans for many years, so we only need to conduct human volunteer trials for our products.
The other reason animal testing continues is because there is a huge industry built around it — from contract testing laboratories to suppliers of cages, equipment, animals and infrastructure. No one wants to lose their pay cheque.
Surely there are laws that require the animal tests to be humane, right? Wrong again. Animal testing is notoriously cruel. Two of the most common tests are Lethal Dose, which involves mice, rats, rabbits and dogs being given increasing doses of the test substance to see which dose will kill them; and the Draize Eye test, in which a substance is placed into the eyes of rabbits who are held in stocks so they can’t rub their eyes. You know how much it stings when you get soap in your eyes? Well multiply that by a hundred for the rabbits who have to endure it for long periods of time before eventually being killed.
This video comes with a warning: you may find some of this images contained in it very disturbing.
It’s really an outrage.
The crazy thing is, there are sophisticated alternatives available, which range from testing on cell and tissue cultures to computerised ‘structure-activity relationship’ models.
According to the Choose Cruelty Free website: “Human cell culture tests have been found to predict toxicity in humans with much greater accuracy than animal tests.”
Choose Cruelty Free is an Australian non-profit organisation that is campaigning for a ban on animal testing of cosmetics in Australia. They’ve distributed more than 15,000 postcards asking Health Minister Nicola Roxon to follow the example of Europe and ban animal testing.
If you’d like to receive a CFF postcard and join the campaign, click here.
Mukti Organic Skincare is a CFF licensee, which means we have been approved as an accredited CFF company and we also donate to CFF in order to be able to use their well-known rabbit logo.
Next time you buy a skincare product or cosmetic, stop and look for the CFF rabbit logo. If the product doesn’t carry it, chances are it has been tested on animals and you may contributing to an industry of suffering.
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