Never doubt the
power of the consumer. When the hip cosmetics company Urban Decay--whose policy against testing on animals is part of its brand--announced
plans to begin selling its products in China, where cruel and deadly
animal tests are required by
the government, disappointed consumers took action. Thousands of them flooded
Urban Decay's headquarters with e-mails, and the company soon reversed course. For staying true to its slogan--"We
don't test on animals. How could anyone?"--and putting ethics ahead of
profits, Urban Decay recently received PETA's
Courage in Commerce Award.
It's bad enough
that some companies are willing to shed their animal-friendly policies as
easily as last year's Day-Glo animal prints for a share of the market in China.
But consumers might be surprised to learn that many makers of cosmetics and
household products still poison and blind animals right here at home. That doesn't
mean that we have to buy what they're selling.
Animal tests are
not required by law for cosmetics and household products in the U.S., and they
often produce inaccurate or misleading results--even if a product has blinded an
animal, it can still be marketed to consumers. Fortunately, the number of forward-thinking
companies continues to grow as more and more manufacturers reject cruel and crude animal tests--relics of
the 1920s--and opt instead for modern, sophisticated techniques to test the
safety of their products. More than 1,300 companies, including Burt's Bees, The
Body Shop, Method and Trader Joe's, refuse to test their products on
animals.
The situation is a
little different in China, where the government currently requires cosmetics companies to test ingredients and
products only on animals--although that's about to change, too. Thanks to guidance from
scientists funded by PETA, Chinese
officials are in the final stages of approving the use of the country's
first-ever non-animal testing method for cosmetics ingredients. The test should
be accepted in China by late summer.
That's the good news. The bad news
is that unlike Urban Decay, some companies have decided that they won't wait
and are selling out animals for the sake of overseas profits. Earlier this
year, PETA was forced to remove Avon, Estee Lauder and Mary Kay--three companies that had been cruelty-free
for decades--from our list of companies that don't test on animals after learning that these
cosmetics giants have been quietly paying to poison animals in laboratories at
the behest of the Chinese government.
Mary Kay, Avon and
Està ©e Lauder may have regressed a generation, but consumers don't have to
backslide with them. We can still choose to purchase products from the more
than 1,300 companies that are committed to their cruelty-free principles. Rewarding
ethical corporate behavior--purchasing humanely produced items instead of ones
that are cruelly produced--does make a difference. Just ask Urban Decay.