It’s a disgrace. Because of the provisions laid out in the world’s largest chemical testing programme, the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals Regulation (REACH), ingredients used in cosmetics continue to be tested on animals within the EU.
In 2013, the European Cosmetics Regulation was supposed to ban the sale of cosmetics products that had been tested on animals. This was a huge step forward in ending cruel and abhorrent cosmetics tests on animals. But under the guise of REACH, the European Commission and the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) are still insisting on testing chemicals used in cosmetics for which there is a possibility of workforce exposure during manufacturing processes.
Despite the clear mandate from the public and international governments on this issue, the questionable interplay between the REACH and Cosmetics regulations means that animals continue to die in tests for cosmetics ingredients. The campaign to end these horrific tests is not over.
With both a ban on testing cosmetics and their ingredients on animals and a ban on the sale and marketing of animal-tested cosmetics in Europe, Israel and, most recently, India, the cosmetics industry has witnessed great progress in the development of superior, human-relevant, non-animal testing methods. It was envisioned that such humane testing methods would prevent millions of animals from being blinded, poisoned and killed in cruel tests for cosmetics.
It is inexcusable in these times that animals can be forced to suffer and die for cosmetics ingredient tests when there is already a saturated marketplace and when most people in Europe oppose it.
PETA and its affiliates are determined to make sure that the public’s opposition to cosmetics testing is respected and that innovative, humane testing methods are used in place of archaic animal tests. Please help by urging the European Commission and ECHA to fulfil the spirit of the law by never allowing cosmetics ingredient tests on animals, no matter what the circumstances are.
