Pros And Cons Of Animal Testing

Due to a mascara causing a women to go blind, he United States Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act, which was passed in 1938, which encouraged companies to utilize animal testing to further test the safety level of chemicals used in their products. Furthermore, it was not until the year 1991 that the European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods was created in an effort to establish valid alternatives to animal testing. This depicts how when the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act was passed, reasonable alternative options were not accessible for companies to use, supporting the reason over why they were forced to turn to animal testing. But now, there are plenty of alternative tests that can be used over animal testing in the cosmetic industry.

For instance, using in Vitro International Corrositex (synthetic skin) has the ability to “provide a chemical corrosivity determination in as little as 3 minutes to four hours”, compared to “animal testing that often takes two to four weeks” (neavs.org). Moreover, an alternative test, DakDak, used to measure the accuracy of sunscreens, was “reported to do in days what it takes animal studies months to do” (neavs.org). Alternatives to animal testing are able to approve of chemicals in a more timely manner. Because of this, companies that chose to utilize these methods are able to approve of chemicals in a more timely manner, demonstrating why these methods should be enforced compared to animal

When animals are used to approve of chemicals for use in cosmetic products, they endure “skin and eye irritation tests where chemicals are rubbed onto the shaved skin or dripped into the eyes of rabbits” (hsi.org). These tests can easily be prevented by the use of alternative tests, which typically involve human cells compared to live animals. Moreover, “Approximately 100,000-200,000 animals” die per year worldwide for testing within the cosmetics industry.” (hsi.org) Despite this number counting the amount of animal tested deaths in the cosmetic industry worldwide, it is a exponential number considering over “40 countries have banned cosmetic testing on animals” (humanesociety.org). These statistics demonstrate how significant the problem of animal testing within the cosmetic industry is by depicting how many animals are negatively affected