Why should animals bleed for our BEAUTY?

Testing on animals is immoral and cruel -An animal should never be used as a tool. So help cruel companies realize Animals have their own interests and lives, And cruelty-free products are the best buys!
—Gina Samsock, age twelve

I think any testing for beauty products is so unnecessary. There are so many successful companies selling good products without animal testing ...I don't believe that you need animal testing, like the ghastly eye test they do on rabbits - they should know what to put in these things by now!'
— American Idol judge Simon Cowell (he might be cruel to contestants but he is certainly no enemy to the animals!)

Until recently, many people thought 'animal tests' meant shampooing rabbits' fur or putting cleansing cream on their whiskers. Of course, it means nothing of the sort. Every year, approximately 14 million animals (more than 38,000 animals every day) are used to test cosmetics, toiletries such as toothpaste and shampoo, and household detergents and other cleaners.

One of the ugliest and, sadly, most common tests on animals is called the Draize test - this is the one that Simon Cowell calls 'ghastly'! For this test, liquids, gels, and powders are put into rabbits' eyes, and technicians write down how the animals' eyes react.

Some animals' eyes swell, and some animals even go blind. Acute toxicity tests are even uglier. Often called 'lethal dose' tests, they measure the amount of a product it takes to kill part of a group of animals forced to swallow or breathe it.

Despite animal tests, people still get sick from swallowing products, getting them in their eyes, or spilling them on their skin. Testing products on animals seems even scarier when you think about how different our bodies are from a guinea pig's or a rabbit's.

Animals used in product tests clearly feel pain, just as we do, but their bodies almost always react in a different way to drugs and other products. For example, aspirin helps most human headaches go away, but it kills cats and penicillin kills guinea pigs but can help fight infection in humans.

There are many modern, humane and more accurate ways to make sure the products we use are safe. With encouragement from those of us who refuse to buy products tested on animals, more and more companies are using test tubes, speedy computer programmes, human volunteers, weird and wonderful artificial human skin and other methods that don't hurt animals to make sure the products we use are just right for us.

Did You Know?

Animal tests for make-up and household use aren't required by law, and they don't protect us. For example, dogs' skin and rabbits' eyes are very different from ours.
Companies that don't test on animals use human volunteers, human skin cells grown in laboratories, and other great methods, as well as known safe and natural ingredients.

People around the world are working to make tests on animals illegal. The two tests mentioned above are already against the law in parts of Australia and Italy. Let's keep going!

There are now hundreds of companies that don't test their products on animals, including some favourites like Hello Kitty, Strawberry Shortcake, Powerpuff Girls, Bonne Bell, Hard Candy, That's So Raven, Urban Decay, Revlon, Clinique, Avon, Bath and Body Works, The Body Shop and, Lush, Stuff by Hilary Duff and Method laundry products.

What You Can Do

Use only cruelty-free products. It's easy! Brittany Murphy, the star of movies like Just Married and Love and Other Disasters,, says she is a sucker for the yummy cruelty-free Dr Pepper - flavoured Lipsmackers gloss by Bonne Bell. Fellow actress Alicia Silverstone (Scooby Doo 2, Beauty Shop, Stormbreaker) can't get enough of cruelty-free cosmetics either. Write to PETA, Post Box 28260, Juhu, Mumbai 400049, or log on to www.caringconsumer.com for free lists of hundreds of cruelty-free companies, and be sure to share them with your friends.

Read up on animal testing at the PETA Kids page (www.PETAkids.com/testing2.html) and download the list of bad companies who do cruel tests - take it with you when you go shopping and make sure you never buy those brands.

Check It Out Visit

www.caringconsumer.com and order a Cruelty Free Pocket Shopping Guide and find out which products are safe to buy. If you have a PlayStation, tackle the PlayStation 2 game, Whiplash (you can order it at www.PETAMall.com) and help a gang of groovy animals escape from Genron, a high-tech lab where innocent animals are used to test human products.

From
50 easy ways Kids Can Help Animals.
Ingrid Newkirk, founder
and director,
People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals
(PETA) India
www.harpercollins.co.in
Rs. 250