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“Animal testing is the ugly secret of the beauty industry, and it's time for it to stop,” says N.G.Jayasimha of Humane Society International.
The animal protection organisation, HSI, has joined with the UK-based Lush Cosmetics to launch an “unprecedented” global campaign to end animal testing for cosmetics.
The campaign has been rolled out in India and other countries to coincide with the World Week for Animals in Laboratories (April 24/25). And it looks to make consumers aware that animal testing is not required for cosmetics, and alternatives are available to research new shampoos, lipsticks, mascaras and so on.
“We are asking the Indian Government, either through the CPCSEA (Committee for Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals) or the Drug Controller-General of India to bring in guidelines replacing the use of animals for testing in the country,” Jayasimha told Business Line .
The Indian Government already has a policy on the use of animals in experimentation, anchored on the four R's – replace animals in experiments, refine the methods of exposure, reduce the number of animals used and rehabilitate the ones that are used. In the case of cosmetics, it is not about safety as data and alternatives are available – it is to do with preventing cruelty to animals, he said.
“Thousands of animals such as rabbits and mice endure painful tests to produce new lipsticks and shampoo,” he points out. The Government needs to define guidelines to ensure animal welfare so that no more will there be tests using mascaras on rabbits and so on, he added.
Testing is already banned in Europe and a further ban on the sale of cosmetics been newly tested on animals in other parts of the world is expected to come into effect in March 2013. “Once these products are outlawed in Europe, it would get dumped in local markets,” he cautioned.
The HSI supports the Leaping Bunny logo by the Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics. It does an independent labelling of products after ensuring there is no animal testing at any stage of development of the cosmetic.
Large cosmetic producers increasingly say that animal testing is no longer used in their product-development, however, they still hesitate to label their products stating the same. And this leads to concerns on whether there is testing at some stage of production, or whether it is undertaken by a third party to whom the research is outsourced, he observed.
The HSI-Lush campaign has been rolled out simultaneously in 48 countries and more than 700 Lush stores in India, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Russia, Canada, and the US. In India, the not-tested-on-animals campaign runs at Lush's 16 outlets at Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Chennai, for instance, he said.
In fact, ethical consumers are also being called-on to sign national petitions or give a missed call on 080 30050050 to support the international ban and send a message to the Indian government asking for animal testing for cosmetics to be banned by law.
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