Europe Bans Cosmetics Tested on Animals
After years of obstruction from the vivisection industry and cosmetic companies, the European Union has finally enacted a complete ban on the sale of cosmetics developed through animal testing.
The ban applies to all products, wherever in the world they come from, and with no further exemptions.
According to the European Commission:
“This is in line with what many European citizens believe firmly: that the development of cosmetics does not warrant animal testing.”
There are still loopholes. The New York Times notes that “companies could use ingredients from tests on animals as long as the tests were carried out for non-cosmetic products like pharmaceuticals.”
And companies will still be doing vivisection for cosmetics being sold elsewhere in the world, like in China, which mandates testing on animals.
A few companies in Europe are still complaining that they haven’t had enough time (more than 10 years so far) to develop alternatives to vivisection. Colin Mackay, a spokesman for the trade association Cosmetics Europe, said that, as a result of the ban, “consumers in Europe won’t have access to new products because we can’t ensure that some ingredients will be safe without access to suitable and adequate testing.”
Frankly, if that’s really the case, most people with the smallest grain of compassion for the millions of rabbits who will now be spared these awful tests, would agree that there are enough kinds of cosmetics already on the market that are entirely safe to use.
After all, kindness to animals makes us as beautiful on the inside as we would like to be on the outside.