This is important you guys – what we have here is a bill that sounds good, but is really going to increase animal testing for personal care products and cosmetics (which I can’t believe is still legal) in the US! Thank you to Bunny Army for bringing this to my attention.
The Personal Care Products Safety Act is a Senate bill, introduced by Senators Dianne Feinstein D-CA and Susan Collins R-ME, to more tightly regulate cosmetics. While a great goal (of course, we want our cosmetics to be safe, but animal testing is actually NOT the best way to do this), the Act has serious flaws:
- It allows animal testing and potentially increases animal testing.
- It has no incentive to use alternative methods, other than weak language that the FDA “shall encourage” alternative methods.
- By allowing animal testing, it delays the switch to far better tests that will use human-specific data rather than animal data.
Toxicologists are increasingly skeptical of animal tests, citing pharmaceutical industry data that animal testing does not correctly predict human response in 96% of human clinical trials. By allowing animal testing, this Act fails us, giving us neither safe nor humane products.
Regarding alternatives to animal testing, Leaping Bunny says, “There are many reliable alternatives to using animals available, including cell and tissue cultures and sophisticated computer and mathematical models. Companies can also formulate products using ingredients already determined to be safe. Cruelty-free companies can use a combination of methods to ensure safety, such as employing in vitro tests and/or conducting clinical studies on humans.”
You can complain about animal testing to your friends, or you can ignore it and hope it goes away. But, neither of those things will help end animal testing. Take action! Your opinion matters. Please write your senators and urge them to oppose this Act. You can find a sample letter to send here. Not sure who your two Senators are? Or need their email address or phone number? Find your Senators’ information at senate.gov/senators/contact.
The bunnies thank you!
This is a dangerous bill, because it could easily pass. Thanks Jen for bringing it to everyone’s attention, and I hope everyone living in the US contacts their senators. It’s so quick and easy to do! 🙁
How is this even happening while other countries are going in the exact opposite direction?
I think sometimes law makers are so focused on one thing (safety in cosmetics in this case) that they totally loose sight of everything else. They have to strengthen the language otherwise this could be seriously abused in order to be crueler to animals.
shocking that this is still happening animal cruelty is terrible