Animal TestingIn our Cosmetic Products

By: Victoria & Ramezy

Have you used or owned any of these Products?

Animal Testing occurs in most of our everyday products. As you can see many of the Products displayed are for Cosmetic use such as• Make-up• Shampoos• Daily hygiene products

What is Animal Testing?

“The term "animal testing" refers to procedures performed on living animals for purposes of research such as…

• assessing the effectiveness of new medicinal products

• testing the human health and/or environmental safety (consumer and industry products)

Examples of products that use animal testing

• Cosmetics

• household cleaners

• food additives

• pharmaceuticals

• industrial/agro-chemicals

It is not required by the United States to conduct testing to ensure the safety of products.

(Humane Society International)

What happens to animals during testing? According to PETA (Ethical Treatment of Animals ), these tests are not required by law, and they

often produce inaccurate or misleading results.

• 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

• repeated force-feeding studies lasting weeks or months to look for signs of general illness or specific health hazards such as cancer or birth defects; 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.

Source: Humanesociety.org

What does it feel like to be tested?In the United Kingdom, Lush (an all-natural cosmetics company)

performed an animal testing scenario using a human as an example to bring an end to Animal Testing

Humane Society International and Lush Cosmetics have joined forces to launch the largest-ever global campaign to end animal testing for cosmetics.

Alternatives to Animal TestingThere is no proven Science that Animal Testing benefits humans

• Scientists have developed sophisticated product tests that are faster, cheaper, and far more accurate than testing on animals. In the 1920s scientists developed human cell cultures and tissue studies (in vitro tests) and artificial human “skin” and “eyes” mimic the body’s natural properties, and a number of virtual organs serve as accurate models of human body parts.

Reconstructive Skin Models

• Episkin: is grown from cells harvested from the top layer of pieces of skin. Reconstructed for the evaluation of cosmetics, pharmaceutical and chemical compunds.

• Epiocular: A reproducible, multi-layered human cell-deprived tissue for testing ocular irritancy (Eyes)of chemicals and others materials. Consists of human derived skin from the outermost layer of skin, similar to the thin tissues found in the cornea.

• Epiderm: human cell-derived, organotypic (tissue removed from an organ) in vitro skin model. It is used for studies of corrosives and irritants

Source: http://www.mattek.com/pages/products/epiderm

Epiderm (Identifies irritant

chemicals)

Epiocular(Eyes)

Episkin(Skin)

What are some products that do not use animal testing?

What can we do to help?

• Stop purchasing products that use animal testing.

• Search for products that state in the back they do not use animal testing.

• Check online before buying products.

• If they test chemicals on animals that have not been known as a safe ingredient for cosmetics for years then why would you put it on your body.