The Cosmetic Crisis: The Sad Facts on Animal Testing

When using make-up or household goods such as furniture polish, it is easy not to think that these products are doing any harm. However, I have learned that each year millions of animals suffer and often die in cosmetic testing, the inhumane testing of these consumer products. Essentially unknown to most shoppers, animals as loved as dogs, guinea pigs, and rabbits who did nothing to make themselves deserving of punishment are tortured and jeopardized. The conclusions to the tests do not even help human health, making the conduction of animal testing difficult to justify.
 There are multiple different types of these tests, and none can be described as anything but irrationally cruel. In some tests, albino rabbits are confined to stocks that do not allow any movement and let only their heads stick out. Their eyes are forced open with painful clasps so that a substance can be dripped in. The adverse effects of the product being tested are recorded at set amounts of time. This can go on for up to eighteen long and gruesome days, while the rabbits endure such symptoms as blood loss, inflammation of the irises and eyelids, ulcers, large-scale depreciation, and even permanent vision loss. Not only must the rabbits experiences these painful symptoms, they also often die by breaking their necks in attempt of freedom from the tight hold of the stocks.

The acute toxicity (lethal dose or poisoning) test is another, possibly even crueler, type of cosmetic testing. An animal victim to this form of testing is given a substance through its mouth or eyes, punctures cut in its throat, or tubes inserted into its stomach. It can also receive the product being tested through a gas mask or shot into its blood vessels or beneath its skin. Animals receive more and more of the product until a certain quantity of them, which can range from 50 to 100 percent, sadly dies. Before dying, they experience such symptoms as blood loss through the mouth, nose, and eyes, difficulty breathing, seizures, atypical body stance, emancipation, rashes, constipation, and diarrhea.

Animal testing can be accredited with purposely killing large masses of animals and harming many more, but it cannot even be said to produce solid results judged as scientifically accurate. Many companies use animal testing simply because by performing it they can sell products that are not truly safe due to the tests' inaccuracy. They often try to argue that they must use animals in cosmetic testing, but over 500 companies have shown that other accurate testing methods can be used, such as technological simulations, tissue and cell cultures, and tests on corneas from eye banks. The Food and Drug Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission do not require animal testing, so there is no reason for it to be performed. Take a stand against this inhumane process that tortures millions by buying cruelty-free products.   

Information Source: http://www.mercyforanimals.org/cosmetic_testing.asp