The Cruelty of Animal Testing

Know the Facts

Save Animals Like Ralph

You are probably aware of the animated short film ‘Save Ralph’ that was released in April 2021. Hollywood filmmakers and movie stars collaborated with Human Society International (HSI) to bring a ‘powerful stop-motion’ production calling for an end to global cosmetic testing on animals. Ralph, a bunny voiced by Taika Waititi, is followed around on his daily routine as a ‘tester’ in a toxicology lab.

Animal testing is banned in 40 countries, but still perfectly legal in most of the world. In fact, in some places it is actually required by the law. ‘Animal testing’ is defined by Cruelty Free International (CFI) as any scientific experimentation done under which a live animal is subjected to one or more acts that are likely to cause them ‘pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm’. This includes: injecting or force-feeding animals with potentially harmful substances, surgically removing animals’ organs or tissues to consciously cause damage, forcing animals to inhale toxic gases, rubbing chemicals into their skin and putting animals in frightening situations to provoke anxiety and depression. What adds to the cruelty of animal testing is the fact that animals are denied pain-relief medication. Within such deliberate uses of force, animals are usually killed at the end of tests.

A variety of animal species, including mice, rats, guinea-pigs, hamsters, rabbits, cats, dogs, pigs, horses, monkeys, fish and more, are regularly used in experiments within the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries to determine whether ‘medicines, pesticides, biocides, food additives, cosmetics and other products are safe and effective for human use’. There are dealers who catch wild animals in the name of conservation; where wild-caught monkeys are banned in Europe, they are perfectly legal elsewhere. Rabbits like Ralph are ‘locked in neck restraints and have cosmetic products and ingredients dripped in their eye and on to the shaved skin on their back…’ The laboratories for animal experimentation are sterile, indoor environments that force animals into cages, pens, or plexiglas boxes, denying them any freedom of movement.

Top Moral Offenders

It is estimated that the top ten countries contributing to the nearly 80 million cases of animal testing annually (2019 estimates) include: China (20.5 million), Japan, the US, Canada, Australia, South Korea, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Germany and France (1.9 million). In 2019, the U.K. conducted 3.4 million animal experiments, with 53% of the tests being done at universities through taxpayers' funds.

The Ineffectiveness of Animal Testing

PETA noted animal experiments to be ‘so pointless that they should just be stopped.’ In 2018, they claimed the National Institute of Health wastes $12 billion a year on research that simply doesn’t work: ‘more than 90% of animal experiments fail to lead to treatments for humans’, and ‘more than 95% of pharmaceutical drugs that test safe and effective in animals fail in human clinical trials’. Aside from the question of voluntary animal abuse, animal testing makes us wonder why our top drug companies are wasting time and resources on current inefficient procedures when they could fund better methods that ensure cheaper, faster-produced and more accurate products to be released into our markets.

There Are Better Methods

It is important for drugs to be tested before being available for human use. Instead of experimenting on animals, there are more reliable and economical non-animal methods for a wide variety of testing applications, ‘including antibody production, skin irritations and sensitization, eye irritation, endocrine disruption, and tobacco product development and testing…’

Where crude skin allergy tests conducted on guinea pigs and mice predicted human reactions 72% and 82% of the time, respectively, alternative cell-based methods have shown more than 90% accuracy to predict human reactions. Moreover, many fundamental science and disease animal studies currently used simply do not translate to humans. These methods can be replaced with ‘new organ-on-ship technology, sophisticated computer simulations, 3-D cultures of human cells, epidemiological studies, and other more modern methods.’

Authoritative Incompetencies

Whilst there have been significant developments in replacing animal testing for ‘regulatory purposes’ (as reconized by many laws) over the last two decades, countries are still too slow to change their drug-testing methods. For example, Conservative Sen. Olsen.’s introduction of Bill S-214 in Canada in 2016 to enhance animal cruelty laws only came before the Senate in 2018. MP Erskine-Smith said “That tells you how long it takes for animals to get any legislation through.”

The main problem has been a lack of enforcement by authorities and an absence of cooperation between parties to accept non-animal tests around the world. Organisations like Cruelty Free International continuously work to ‘challenge decision-makers to make a positive difference for animals’ and ‘champion better science and cruelty-free living’.

Past and Present Legislations

In the USA, rats, mice, fish, amphibians and birds are not defined as animals under animal experimentation regulations. There are no requirements for legal permission to be obtained for groups to experiment on animals. They don’t even include those animal-testing statistics in national reports.

In 2018, the largest petition Canada has ever seen in nearly 70 years obtained 630,542 signatures calling for a ban on animal cosmetic testing, which amounts to over 500,000 cases per year. Body Shop Canada, in collaboration with CFI, became the first international beauty brand to advocate against the practice in 1989. Back in 2013, both organisations contributed to the complete ban on the sale of cosmetics developed through animal testing within the EU.

Toby Milton, manager of The Body Shop Canada, states animal testing to be “completely unnecessary”; indeed, 88% of Canadians believe animal abuse to be unworthy to ensure the safety of cosmetics for humans, and 81% of Candadians believe animal testing should be outlawed entirely.

Comeback

In 1998, the U.K. became the first country to ban animal testing for cosmetics and their ingredients. Now, for the first time in 23 years, the use of animal testing for inegredients in the cosmetics industries could be required as the Home Office, aligning itself with an existing EU ruling, has “reconsidered its policy”.

Director of Science and Regulatory Affairs at CFI, Dr Taylor, said the legislation “blows a hole in the U.K.’s longstanding leadership of no animal testing for cosmetics… a mockery of the country’s quest to be at the cutting edge of research and innovation, relying once again on cruel and unjustifiable tests that date back over half a century.”

The more hopeful news: a 2020 survey from ‘Frame’, a U.K. charity, found that 84% of respondents would not buy cosmetic products which had one of its ingredients tested on animals. Moreover, over 70 companies - including Unilever, Avon, Boots, Waitrose and the Co-op - voiced concerns against the Home Office’s comeback of animal testing legislation.

Our Moral Responsibilities

Since there are existing legislation that actually require animal testing on products, it is our ethical duty to know the brands that test on animals and to stop using their products and funding their animal rights abuses. However, some brands do misleadingly label themselves as ‘cruelty-free’: an unregulated term defined by Glamour as any product and its ingredients that are not tested on animals. More ways to identify if brands are cruelty-free is to ensure no suppliers or third parties test on animals.

Giant corporations that own the majority of the brands we generally find in most retail and drug stores include: L’Oreal, Estee Lauder, Procter & Gamble, Clorox, Johnson & Johnson, S.C. Johnson, Colgate-Palmolive, Reckitt Benckiser, Church & Dwight, Unilever, and Henkel. All these brands test on animals, and all brands - aside from L’Oreal, who have ‘kept their ethical stances and have remained cruelty-free under the ownership’ - have shown a lack of real effort to stop their unethical policies of animal testing.

Some brands that do not test on animals include: Fenty Beauty, Lush, KVD Vegan Beauty, Hourglass Cosmetics, Garnier, Dove, H&M, CoverGirl, Herbivore, Too Faced, E.L.F. Cosmetics, Tower 28 Beauty, Milani, Glossier, Beauty Bakerie, Urban Decay and InnBeauty Project.

Ethical Elephant concludes there are more than 2,000 cruelty-free beauty brands worldwide. ‘No single global shopping guide yet exists, but HSI recognizes LeapingBunny.org, BeautyWithoutBunnies, Logical Harmony, ChooseCrueltyFree and Te Protejo as useful resources.’

HSl warns that even cruelty-free cosmetics are under threat if chemical safety legislation continues to require new animal tests for chemical ingredients to be used in cosmetics. Campaigns like #SaveRalph is important to put in place bans for animal testing. It’s also up to us to withdraw our support, if we haven’t already, for companies that abuse animal rights in the name of human development.