Dear friends, 

I love my dogs so much, don’t you? As a matter of fact, I love animals in general. So is the life of an animal worth it for a perfume or nail polish? They are lovable, complex and lastly, they have become our companions. Many of us use makeup on our day-to-day basis but we aren’t sure how it came about. We normally think it is produced in a factory and shipped out, but that is not the case. We think about makeup and how beautiful it looks, but do we ever stop to think how they made sure it was safe for humans? Products ranging from eyes to lips to hair to nails, you name it, use animals for toxicity and other types of tests. 

Huge companies like Benefit, Maybelline, Estée Lauder, OPI, Clinique and tons of other brands use animals to tests their makeup. But why? Although “The FD&C Act does not specifically require the use of animals in testing cosmetics for safety” companies still feel the need to test products meant for humans, on humans. Animals that are bred in these facilities ‘live their lives confined to bleak cages, experiencing only artificial light, bland food, and the four walls of a laboratory”

Trigger warning: I will be sharing an excerpt from PETA that may be disturbing to some 

 “The notorious Draize tests involve placing rabbits in restraining stocks so that they cannot struggle or wipe their eyes. Experimenters pull their eyelids apart and apply chemicals onto the eye. In the similarly horrific skin test, experimenters typically apply chemicals onto the shaved skin of rabbits to check for the severity of the reaction. After the test is over, they kill the animals.” (PETA).

Makeup has been used to test on thousands of innocent animals including rabbits, dogs, hamsters. These are pets that can feel pain and different emotions, “Animals get excited, happy, and scared in the same way we do” (OneKindPlanet). In the beauty world, animals are “suffering and dying [from] test[s] like shampoo, mascara, perfume, nail polish, hairspray” and so many other products are killing animals when there are so may cruelty- free products available (Humane Society). More Companies like Lush, Aveda, and Dermalogica are all brands that avoid testing their products on animals. In the cosmetics industry “chemicals are rubbed onto the shaved skin or dripped into the eyes of restrained rabbits,” mice are being “repeatedly force-[fed] chemical substances”, and “lethal dose tests” are all being conducted just for beauty products (Humane Society). The suffering of these poor animals does not end there, “at the end of some tests, the animals are killed, normally by asphyxiation, neck breaking, or decapitation, [no] pain relief provided” (Humane Society). 

At the end of the day, there are many different products using ingredients already known to be safe, there are non-animal tests that can be conducted and proven reliable. Today with the latest technology “modern alternatives can more closely mimic how humans respond to  cosmetic ingredients and products” therefore animal testing is that much more out dated In places like “Brazil and South Korea… it is illegal to conduct animal experimentation if a non-animal approach is available” (Humane Society International). Going back to alternatives mentioned earlier, there are a few different effective replacements. One example of a replacement is a method called in vitro. Instead of using mice, in vitro has been used to “identify severe eye irritants and substances that could cause allergic contact dermatitis” and computers have been used to “predict a chemicals toxicity” which have both greatly reduced the need for the testing of animals (National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences).

I created this petition because I know my friends can help me. I am really passionate about this, f you guys can help me by signing this I can send the results along with my argument to Christie Fleischer, CEO of Benefit Cosmetics, if my petition gets enough signatures. Benefit Cosmetics is a beauty company that still relies on testing on harmless animals for their products as mentioned before. Not enough of my peers are aware of how severe these ongoing problems truly are. Whether it is cosmetic or medical animal testing is wrong. I believe the first place to start is in the cosmetic industry because I firmly believe a change could be permanently made for the future,

 all love our animals so much whether they are dogs, cats, bunnies, or hamsters, we can put an end to their suffering together. Please sign this petition to end testing for good. 

 

Your Friend, 

Daniela Ash AKA Dani 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Works Cited 

“Alternatives to Animal Testing.” National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/science/sya-iccvam/index.cfm

“Animal Testing.” Humane Society International, 7 Apr. 2022, https://www.hsi.org/issues/animal-testing/

“Animal Testing: Animals Used in Experiments.” PETA, 9 Feb. 2022, https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/

“Cruelty Free International Homepage.” Cruelty Free International Homepage | Cruelty Free International, 28 Feb. 2022, https://crueltyfreeinternational.org/

“Do Animals Feel Emotions? - Onekind Planet Biology.” OneKindPlanet, https://onekindplanet.org/animal-biology/do-animals-feel-emotions/#:~:text=The%20short%20answer%20though%20is,animals%20after%20all%20%5B5%5D 

“Ending Cosmetics Animal Testing.” The Humane Society of the United States, https://www.humanesociety.org/all-our-fights/ending-cosmetics-animal-testing

“Medical Ethics: Animal Testing.” LibGuides, https://researchguides.austincc.edu/c.php?g=434787&p=2965352