Beauty Without Pain?: Testing on Animals in the United States and United Kingdom
Tanja Vucetic
Every day, millions of cosmetics and personal
care products such as makeup, shampoos, deodorants, and moisturizers are used
by millions of people.[i] In fact, the cosmetic/beauty industry garnered
over sixty-two billion dollars in 2016 in the United States
alone.[ii] Before these products can enter the market stream, they
are tested to ensure their safety. Most of the time, the testing is
done on animals.[iii] In the United States alone, more than one
hundred million animals are used for a variety of testing each
year,[iv] and between one hundred thousand and two hundred thousand just
for cosmetics.[v] Animals such as mice, rats, hamsters, frogs, and
even dogs are used in drug, chemical, and cosmetic testing as well as medical
training labs and highschool biology classes.[vi] However,
all the testing comes at a cost in the form of the animal lives that are
sacrificed for human health and benefit. When testing cosmetics,
animals are forced to endure experiments such as
skin and eye irritation tests where chemicals are rubbed onto the
shaved skin or dripped into the eyes of rabbits; repeated oral force-feeding
studies lasting weeks or months to look for signs of general illness or
specific health hazards, . . . and ‘lethal dose’ tests in which animals are
forced to swallow massive amounts of a test chemical to determine the dose that
causes death.[vii]
Tests like these subject thousands of animals to excruciating pain
without any relief and cause symptoms such as “blindness, swollen eyes, sore
bleeding skin, internal bleeding, organ damage, birth defects, convulsions, and
death.”[viii] The animals that do survive are most often killed at
the end of the test.
There
is some federal protection for animals used in testing. Congress enacted The
Laboratory Animal Welfare Act of 1966, which later became known simply as the
Animal Welfare Act (“AWA”). From the time of its enactment until today,
the AWA is the first and only federal law of its kind. However, it
is often misunderstood that the AWA prohibits animal
testing. Rather, the AWA sets the minimum standards for care and
treatment that must be provided to certain animals that are bred or bought for
commercial sale, to be used in research, or to be exhibited to the
public. While revolutionary for its time and still currently the
only federal law of its kind, the AWA has failed to be effective because it
excludes ninety five percent of the animals that are most commonly
used: mice, rats, birds, fish, reptiles, and
amphibians. This is the only federal law of its kind, and there are
no federal laws regarding animal testing for cosmetics. However, California,
New Jersey, and New York have each exacted laws that prohibit testing on
animals for cosmetics.
However,
the U.K. has taken an a far stricter approach. The U.K. has entirely
banned testing on animals for cosmetics. In fact, the U.K. has some
of the strictest laws in the world. In 1986, Parliament enacted
the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, which regulated the use of
animals in experiments and testing.[ix] In 2004, the EU issued a
directive that prohibited testing finished cosmetic products on
animals. Since 2009, animal testing for ingredients has been banned
as well as marketing any “cosmetic products containing ingredients which have
been tested on animals.”[x] For ingredients or products that
required more complexity, the ban was extended to March 11, 2013.[xi] Since
then, no cosmetic products have been allowed to be marketed or sold in the U.K.
if the finished product or any ingredient therein was tested on animals.
[i]. See
MarketResearch.com: The U.S. Beauty and Cosmetics Market Expected to
Exceed $62 Billion in 2016, Cision:
News (Jan. 26, 2016),
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/marketresearchcom-the-us-beauty-and-cosmetics-market-expected-to-exceed-62-billion-in-2016-300209081.html#.
[ii]. Id.
[iii]. See discussion infra Part
II, Section A.
[iv]. Experiments
on Animals: Overview, People
Ethical Treatment Animals,
https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/animals-used-experimentation-factsheets/animal-experiments-overview/
(last visited July 12, 2017).
[v]. About
Cosmetics Animal Testing, Humane
Soc’y Int’l, http://www.hsi.org/issues/becrueltyfree/facts/about_cosmetics_animal_testing.html?referrer
(last visited July 25, 2017).
[vi]. Experiments
on Animals: Overview, supra note 4.
[vii]. See
About Cosmetics Animal Testing, supra note 5.
[viii]. Id.