Originally publsihed at: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/jQ0QkKy4KrCwXvPNKh67PA
Same link to bilingual version
Cruetly on the Rise
As a result of urbanization, social media influence, and a booming economy, China, the world’s second-largest cosmetics market, is observing a growing demand for cosmetic products.
Growth rate of the Chinese cosmetics market (See image for sources)
By 2021, the size of the Chinese cosmetics market is expected to reach 485 billion yuan (69.4 billion dollars). While some cosmetics companies wish to expand their business in such a lucrative overseas market, some are hesitant when it comes to selling in China. This has to do with one of the most sensitive matters of the industry, which is animal cruelty.
Since cosmetics are intended to be directly applied to external parts of the human body, like makeup products, skincare products, and fragrances, their safety and the safety of their ingredients need to be carefully evaluated before going on sale. A lot of cosmetics companies do this by forcing live animals to undergo scientific experiments, in which a cosmetics ingredient or a product sample is rubbed onto their shaved skin, dripped into their eyes, force-fed, or inhaled. These scientific experiments are collectively known as cosmetic animal tests.
Some of the animals that are subjected to cosmetic animal tests include rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, mice, rats, dogs, and monkeys. According to Humane Society International, every year, just for cosmetics, 100,000-200,000 animals die slow and painful deaths in laboratories around the world. In some cases, pregnant animals may be involved, which allows experimenters to monitor specific health hazards such as birth defects.
The duration of an animal test is usually 28 or 90 days. At the end of each testing cycle, animal subjects, even ones that are pregnant, are killed by neck-breaking, decapitation, or suffocation because they’ve endured irreversible damage. Keep in mind that throughout this entire process, pain relief is not provided at all. So, animals have to endure any excruciating pain that comes with internal bleeding, bleeding of the skin, irreversible organ damage, blindness, convulsions, and other adverse health effects that may occur during animal tests.
The Draize Eye Irritancy Test (DEIT) is one of the most commonly used toxicity tests for cosmetics. In a Draize test, laboratory animals are restrained, and a cosmetics sample is introduced into their eyes, possibly resulting in eye redness, swelling, discharge, ulceration, or even blindness. Albino rabbits are usually the test subjects for this procedure primarily because they are cheap, small, and not as aggressive as other animals.
Tests like the Draize test are usually conducted in a laboratory setting, and this may further increase the distress of the animal subjects. For example, rabbits are crepuscular animals who are active only at dawn and dusk. They are extremely sensitive to light, as it is what maintains their crepuscular circadian rhythm. In a laboratory setting where bright artificial lights are always on, rabbits are more prone to anxiety and stress. This may harm their immune system and make them even more vulnerable. Moreover, rabbits are social animals who are used to living in large communities. They need companionship, and they fear to be alone. In the laboratory, rabbits are often isolated in individual cages. This may further inhibit their natural behaviors and increase their anxiety and stress levels.
In today’s world, we put the beautification of our faces and bodies above the lives and freedom of innocent animals. Our misguided beliefs no longer struck us as absurd and destructive.
A wake-up call is what we desperately need.
A Flawed Method
Since safety data obtained from an animal test is aimed to be generalized to the human population, the experimenter must make the assumption in which laboratory animals have the same physiological reactions to chemicals as humans. However, most of the time, this assumption doesn’t hold true. For example, drugs that we often use to treat or prevent an illness, such as penicillin and aspirin, may kill or cause birth defects in laboratory animals like guinea pigs, mice, rats, and monkeys. Therefore, reactions to chemicals vary drastically between humans and members of other species, and animal testing is an extremely unreliable method that yields inaccurate and ungeneralizable results.
According to Forbes, animal tests only produce valid results about 40-60% of the time. Even if an ingredient passes its respective animal tests, there’s still a 40-60% chance that it may put your skin, eyes, and general health at risk. Cosmetic animal testing is just a flawed procedure that was devised back in the 1930s when our scope of knowledge in the scientific field was extremely limited. It’s entirely unreasonable to continue believing and using such outdated “bad science” in an era filled with scientific and technological advances.
The Draize test was developed in 1944 by two American toxicologists, John H. Draize and Jacob M. Spines.
So why are companies still testing on animals when it is flawed and unreliable? Cosmetics companies are always looking to develop new ingredients, which can potentially generate a considerable amount of profit. Unlike ingredients that have been around for years, the safety of new ingredients has to be evaluated by animal tests, not because they are a credible source of data, but because regulators are more convinced by animal test results.
(Polyp, n.d.)