Shannon Marquess

Mr. Wolfe

English 101

6 December 2020

Animal Cruelty on Beauty Products and How We Should Change it

They say a dog is a man’s best friend and they will never leave your side after you show

them love and that they can always trust you. Animal testing means that animals’ rights are being

taken away without any thought of their quality of life. So why do we not show that love for all

animals? Shouldn’t any kind of animal be shown some respect for their wellbeing and freedom.

Although some animal testing has helped humankind overcome diseases in the past including

polio and other dramatic diseases it has been becoming over influenced in today’s society. I

contend we should stop animal testing because there are other ways being searched to stop

animal cruelty including, people preventing from buying and selling the products being tested on

animals, lab technicians finding alternatives to making cruelty-free beauty products, and help

prevent animal testing by letting people know what is happening.

Testing on living animals has been used repeatedly over the past years since as early as

500 BC. It had been passed by the Federal Animal Welfare Act in 1966 and amended in 1970.

You can estimate 26 million animals are being used every year in the United States. They are

used to test medications and to develop medical treatments, but mostly used to test the safety for
human products. People who are for animal testing say that there are no alternative methods for

researching any other forms to animal testing than to test on an animal and that there’s no

complete living organism that can enable treatments for humans. On the other hand, those that

are against animal cruelty including myself say that it is cruel and inhumane to experiment on

animals. Also, that humans are different from animals so there would be different results and

there are other alternatives to experiment on other than animals. An article called Cruelty-free

Cosmetics 101 says, “The beauty industry makes people look and feel beautiful but is

horrifically ugly when it comes to the treatment of animals in laboratories” (1). In other words,

beauty companies that make these products expect people to feel beautiful when putting on these

cosmetics, but we don’t see what the behind the scenes is happening. Some ways to prevent

animal cruelty is to look on the bottle for cruelty free products. The products may cost more

because it’s a little more expensive, but you are saving millions of animals lives. It will have a

rabbit on the label, and it will say cruelty-free. Make-up brand companies that use cruelty-free

products include: “NYX, Wet n’ Wild, Too Faced, Bath and Body Works, and elf.” A lot of

companies have put effort in to save the animals from getting chemicals dropped in their eyes or

getting chemical burns from testing things on their skin. Products that are to be considered are

body wash, face wash, shampoo and conditioner, mouth wash, toothpaste, deodorant, perfume,

nail polish, lip balm, mascara, and eyeshadow. Bans in animal testing for cosmetics has been

banned in several countries, but still occurs today in Canada and a few other countries. It is our

job as consumers to try our best to buy cruelty-free products and support the companies that sell

the products as well as influencing others to do the same.

Lab technicians have studied other substitutes to test cosmetics other than testing on

animals. These include artificial tissue, test tubes, human skin, computer models, and
genotoxicity testing. These few newer experiments not only help save animals lives that are

being endangered but are more effective to humans than it would be testing on an animal because

animals aren’t the same as humans in any form. Some may say humans and animals react the

same however, there skin may not react to the chemical that is for humans. One of the

alternatives is human skin which comes from the skin layers on collagen, skin cells called

keratinocytes which is left-over from breast surgery. Labs can test the safety of cosmetics by

putting the skin on the product then can then check the proportion of cells that have been killed

off by adding a yellow chemical called MTT which turns blue when the tissue is living. Kathy

Archibald from the article, human skin to replace animal testing says, "This is a great advance

not just for animals but for people, who will finally have a safety test that is relevant to them says

animal skin often differs dramatically from human skin in terms of sensitivity”(1). Another

example as mentioned earlier is computer modeling. Computer modeling is beneficial to lab

techs at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health because it can predict a new

chemical toxicity better than an animal test. The lab technicians simply took the chemicals they

developed to figure out the relationships between the chemical structures and the toxic

properties. Which then shows that they can predict the chemical properties of a compound is way

more accurate than animal testing. People don’t have any choice but to adopt alternative methods

in which these can generally show how a human can react to chemicals rather than animals.

To ensure that everyone is properly advised that animal cruelty needs to come to a stop

what we need to do is spread the word and let everyone know what products are okay to

purchase and what products to stay away from. In an article involving the Cruelty-free

International organization they discuss how the United States ban animal testing for cosmetics

worldwide. Cruelty-free International is asking all compassionate American citizens to sign its
pledge to send a clear message to regulators that the time has come to end animal testing for

cosmetics in the United States for good. The article from Cruelty-free International states, “There

is no worldwide ban on animal testing for cosmetics, despite progress with some countries and

companies, over 80% of the world, including Canada, still allows animals to be used in cruel

experiments.”(1) Animals are tested on and disposed of hazardous waste in the United States

every year. This is repulsive and it is getting much worse. These animals are physically

assaulted, poisoned, operated without anesthesia, and are painfully subjected to toxic chemicals

on their skin. As well as forced to inhale them, and in splashed in their eyes. Animal testing is

highly undependable, because animals are imperiled to high doses of chemicals that humans are

never going to react to. Also, physiologically animals react different to chemicals than humans

do so they’re destroying innocent animals’ life for no valid reason. It is very time consuming to

abuse an animal for testing and could sometimes take up to years to find results and killing up to

thousands of animals just to get a result in one product. Another thing is even though some

treatments lab technicians might find useful on animals to heal them, they may turn out to be

toxic on animals. For an example fruits and chocolates are poisonous to dogs but are very

beneficial to humans. Another way to let people know animal testing can be prevented is making

their own household products. Making home remedies with the products you already have at

home. Hand out brochures to help people follow in the right path and sign up for cruelty- free

support groups.

In conclusion, animals all have a quality of life and should get the respect and love from

humans as you treat your house pets or farm animals. Together we can support animals’ rights to

live a life of freedom and not suffer any kind of unlawful pain. Therefore, helping people from
buying non cruelty-free products and leading them more to buying cruelty-free products. As well

as lab technicians using their alternatives to manufacture the products including artificial tissue,

test tubes, human skin, computer models, and genotoxicity testing. Lastly, letting people know

what’s going wrong in the labs and get them to join in the groups to help prevent animal testing

form happening. Animals are not much like humans however, they do deserve their freedom of

life like us humans do. So lets put a stop to animal cruelty and help them the best we can by not

buying the products being used on animals and getting support from others.
 Works Cited

Cole, Natacha. “Cruelty-Free Cosmetics 101.” Natural Life, July 2015, pp. 1–4. EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=awh&AN=110678894&site=ehost-

live.

Merali, Zeeya. “Human Skin to Replace Animal Tests.” New Scientist, vol. 195, no. 2614, July

2007, p. 14. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/S0262-4079(07)61866-1.

O’Driscoll, Cath. “Urgent Action Needed to Avoid Unnecessary Animal Tests.” Chemistry &

Industry, no. 17, Sept. 2009, p. 5. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&db=bsh&AN=44167693&site=ehost-live.

PR Newswire. “Cruelty Free International Connects With The Body Shop Customers in the U.S.

to Call for a Ban on Cosmetics Testing on Animals Worldwide.” PR Newswire US, 11

June 2012. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&db=bwh&AN=201206111130PR.NEWS.USPR.UKM531&site=ehost-live.

ProCon/EncylopaediaBritannica,Inc. Chicago, Illonois 2020

Speit, Günter. “How to Assess the Mutagenic Potential of Cosmetic Products without Animal

Tests?” Mutation Research/Genetic Toxicology & Environmental Mutagenesis, vol. 678,

no. 2, Aug. 2009, pp. 108–112. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/j.mrgentox.2009.04.006.