Cosmetic testing (jade)
When did this become popular?
In 1938, the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act was signed in the United States. It required proof of the safety of cosmetic products. This urged companies to begin testing on animals.
In 1944 Draize eye and skin irritancy tests are developed and become standard practices of cosmetic animal testing. (link)
Defense for it/ why is it a thing
Testing on animals for cosmetic reasons is because companies attempt to incorporate new ingredients in their products and since they are new, there is no previous research on the safety of them.
In certain countries like China. animal testing is required to make sure that the products are safe for human use. Many companies use this as an excuse to test on animals. Since China has such a large market, many companies, even if they don’t test their products on animals will still sell to China. However, even if they don’t test on animals, they are not considered to be cruelty-free if they sell their products to China. Despite this, there are cruelty-free brands that refuse to sell to these countries to protest the animal testing laws. (link)
Cosmetic animal testing (jade)
Backlash for it
Many countries have banned animal testing for cosmetics. Countries like Israel, India, New Zealand, Norway, and the European Union all have bans against cosmetic testing on animals. Other countries like Brazil and Turkey have partial bans on cosmetic testing on animals.
Is this accepted by medical testing on animals?
Biomedical testing for drugs is required by the FDA and the US law to understand the effects of the drugs and to ensure safety for humans. However, cosmetic animal testing is not required by the FDA in the United States (link)
What can be done to stop cosmetic animal testing?
Increasingly around the world, there are policies and laws to stop animal testing. In addition, there are already ingredients that have been testing on animals that are proven to be safe on humans. If companies opt to use ingredients that have been already tested, they can stop testing animals on new ingredients. (link) Companies can still ensure safety to their costumers if they choose to use ingredients that have already been tested.
*Sources are linked within the outline
While we talked about how we are going to focus on more biomedical research I still think we can use some of the parts of the backlash for this. Lots of animal rights groups focus on animal testing in general and not just medical and cosmetic research.
I think this section is going to be really helpful for our background story. I agree with the focus of the backlash of people against it, in order to demonstrate the controversy itself.