Beauty Talk: What is Animal Testing?

In my “About Me” I mention that the company I currently work for inspired me to seek cruelty-free beauty products. Though that is true I also did my own research before coming to any conclusion. What I am hoping to do every other week is to bring up different topics and research them, so you can learn a bit more about it and have the ability to make your own opinion. For my first post I decided to write about animal testing since it seems so fitting. I will also be linking the sites I’ve obtained information from. I hope you guys enjoy this and learn something new. If you have any question, comments, or suggestions for future topics let me know!  

What is animal testing in regards to cosmetics and fragrance?

Animal testing for cosmetics causes tens of thousands of rabbits, guinea pigs, mice and rats to suffer through painful experiments that often end in death. Experiments can include skin and eye irritation tests where chemicals are rubbed onto the shaved skin or dripped into the eyes of restrained rabbits without any pain relief. Other tests involve force feeding chemicals for weeks to months, and widely condemned lethal dose tests, in which animals are forced to swallow large amounts of a test chemical to determine the dose that causes death.

http://www.humanesociety.org/news/press_releases/2013/08/miss-america-2014-contestant-signs-cruelty-free-pledge-080813.html

How effective is animal testing?

Independent scientific reviews demonstrate that research using animals correlates very poorly to real human patients. In fact, the data show that animal studies fail to predict real human outcomes in 50 to 99.7 percent of cases. This is mainly because other species seldom naturally suffer from the same diseases as found in humans. Animal experiments rely on often uniquely human conditions being artificially induced in non-human species. While on a superficial level they may share similar symptoms, fundamental differences in genetics, physiology and biochemistry can result in wildly different reactions to both the illness and potential treatments. For some areas of disease research, overreliance on animal models may well have delayed medical progress rather than advanced it. By contrast, many non-animal replacement methods such as cell-based studies, silicon chip biosensors, and computational systems biology models, can provide faster and more human-relevant answers to medical and chemical safety questions that animal experiments cannot match.

http://www.hsi.org/campaigns/end_animal_testing/qa/about.html#wrong

As reported by the American Anti-Vivisection Society, “Acetaminophen, for example, is poisonous to cats but is a therapeutic in humans; penicillin is toxic in guinea pigs but has been an invaluable tool in human medicine; morphine causes hyper-excitement in cats but has a calming effect in human patients; and oral contraceptives prolong blood-clotting times in dogs but increase a human’s risk of developing blood clots. Many more such examples exist.”

http://www.care2.com/causes/new-technology-more-reliable-and-ethical-than-animal-experiments.html

Are there alternative methods to animal testing?

• An embryonic stem cell test, using mouse-derived cells to assess potential toxicity to developing embryos, has been validated as a partial replacement for birth-defect testing in rats and rabbits.
• The 3T3 Neutral Red Uptake Phototoxicity Test uses cells grown in culture to assess the potential for sunlight-induced (“photo”) irritation to the skin.
• Human skin model tests are now in use, including the validated EpiDerm™ test, which has been accepted almost universally as a total replacement for skin corrosion studies in rabbits.
• The use of human skin leftover from surgical procedures or donated cadavers can be used to measure the rate at which a chemical is able to penetrate the skin.
• Microdosing can provide information on the safety of an experimental drug and how it is metabolized in the body by administering an extremely small one-time dose that is well below the threshold necessary for any potential pharmacologic effect to take place.

http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/alternatives-testing-without-torture.aspx                  

Is it necessary to continue animal testing?

Only 6% of animal testing is done for medical research the rest is cosmetic

There are many countries that have found a way to survive without

depending on animal testing. The UK had tried to establish a law in which all

cosmetic products must be tested on animals, due to an uproar from the

public they did a 180 and banned animal testing. Israel is joining this group

and banned the sales of animal tested products at the start of the year. India has

also joined the ban of animal testing for cosmetics on June 28th.

Australia has established a ban on animal testing in the country but not

in the selling of any animal tested products, meaning a company can test on

animals here in the US and then ship it out to Australia for sale. Surprisingly

the FDA does not mandate cosmetic and fragrance companies to test on

animals, meaning they don’t need to and can still sell their products in the

US.

http://www.fda.gov/Cosmetics/ProductandIngredientSafety/ProductTesting/ucm072268.htm

Are there countries that require animal testing?

China is one of the only countries that required animal testing in order to be granted the right to sell. Which is why cosmetics brands that sell in China are NOT cruelty-free.

If you have any other questions the Humane Society has a pretty lengthy FAQ regarding the topic. Here is the link- http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/cosmetic_testing/qa/questions_answers.html