Back in November, I wrote this critical review on the topic of animal testing in the cosmetics industry. Tonight, my fishes (Sylvester and Marcel) and I are celebrating the European Coalition to End Animal Experiments (ECEAE)'s victory with the season 4 premiere of Community and some vegan chocolate!
Animals in Mascara: do we really need to conduct tests on animals in cosmetics research?
Animals are widely used as research
models because their involvement in science has led to
advances in improving human and animal lives through medical, genetic, and
animal welfare research, just to name a few. However, there is a branch of
research that does not improve the physical health nor the mental state of
humans – cosmetic research. Unfortunately, due to the high demand in the
cosmetics market, research must continue to ensure the safety of the
consumers. The most common methods of testing involve the use of animals. Europe,
with more than 10 million animals used annually to test chemical safety
(Nature 2005), is currently the leading continent in the cosmetics market,
and the European Union’s (EU) actions have a huge impact on the decisions of
other countries (Abbott 2009). The development in research of alternate
methods to testing cosmetics on animals and the general trend of the public in
switching to more natural and earth-friendly products are pushing government
policies worldwide to create new legislation that will both ensure consumer
safety while maximizing animal welfare.
Most of
the tests traditionally performed on animals in the past have not undergone strict validation and many studies have found
them inaccurate (Abbott 2005). The test results of a common candidate for
cosmetic testing, the Draize rabbit, were found difficult to reproduce and
this high variance in results would require an even higher number of
experimental subjects to test its accuracy (Abbott 2005). LD50,
a traditional and widely-used test that determines the lethal dose of a given
chemical, is responsible for a huge number of deaths in animals being tested on
(Abbott 2005). This test requires chemicals to be fed to animals in increments
until it leads to the death of half the experimental popoulation (Abbott 2005). Body tissue of humans and animals can also react very differently to
different chemicals, thus making many results produced by animal research irrelevant
to humans (Keville 2002).These are only a few of the issues that have drawn
the attention of the public and policy-makers and have caused them to question
and reconstruct the regulations in governing animal testing.
Each year, the EU sets aside
€35-million, dedicated to the research in developing alternate methods to
animal testing in the cosmetics industry (Abbott 2009). This has led to the
creation of the European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods
(ECVAM), a small lab in Italy
formed solely for the purpose of developing alternate models to testing chemicals on (Nature 2008). The United States
and Japan
have learned from this example and are producing tests that parallel those of
the EU’s (Abbott 2009). However, the American version of the ECVAM, The
Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods (ICCVAM),
lacks the funding that ECVAM has and thus, lacks the results (European Report
2011). Aside from the members of the EU, no other country has existing
legislation that governs the laws of animal testing in the cosmetics industry
(Abbott 2009). It is apparent, then, that for research in this field to
continue there must be an increase in interest, support, and funding.
The path to an absolute
replacement of animals in cosmetic testing faces many obstacles. For one, the
fourth and fifth largest cosmetics markets, China
and Brazil,
respectively, have both made animal testing mandatory for all commercially-used chemicals (European
Report 2011). Many companies do not feel comfortable with their products until
they have been tested on animals, regardless of the validity of these tests,
says Michael Balls, the head of ECVAM (Keville 2002). Although in vitro tests are easily reproducible
due to their accessibility, the results produced from these experiments are
sometimes not relevant (Abbott 2005). These alternative testing methods
are also not conclusive enough to validate all types of common cosmetics such
as creams and lotions, and are deemed unfavourable to industries (McKim et al.
2011).
Whenever there is an involvement
of animals in research, there are always questions of ethics. Utilitarianism is
an appropriate approach in viewing this topic as it weighs out the benefits and
disadvantages and strives to seek the best solution for both humans and the
laboratory animals. It is often argued that is it appropriate for humans to use
animals for their benefit because of their rank in evolution and the complexity
of their nervous system; however, many studies have shown that animals also
respond to stimuli in a similar way that humans do. Their capacity to feel pain
and suffering should be a concern and action must be taken to reduce the
stress that these animals feel. If biomedical research requires an endpoint to
experiments based on the suffering of the animal, why should it be permitted for
cosmetic research to poison their research animals to the point of death?
Cosmetic research takes the lives of thousands of animals but its outcome may
not save a single human life. With a utilitarian perspective in mind, it is
clear that the use of animals in cosmetics research is inefficient and
unethical.
Cosmetics research around the
world should adopt the current protocols current put forward by the EU and help
contribute to the movement for better alternatives to cosmetics testing. There have
already been many success stories in finding replacements for these in vivo experiments with the use of cell
cultures and computer programs (Keville 2002). These methods not only test
whether a certain chemical is an irritant, but can also its level of potency (McKim
et al. 2011). With lower costs and fewer
casualties, it would only make sense to invest in the research for alternative
methods (McKim et al. 2011). Although the methods are still in process of
being validated, their potential to the cosmetics industry and to general
animal welfare is obvious. The aspiration to refining alternative methods will
not only lighten the burden of laboratory animals, but also inspire the
development of better methods in general. In the future, with the continual
advancement in developing alternative methods to animal testing in the
cosmetics industry, looking good will not come at a price for both consumers
and animals.
References
1) Abbott, A. (2005). More than a cosmetic change. Nature
438(10): 144-146
2) Abbott, A. (2009). The lowdown on animal testing for
cosmetics. Nature.
3) European
Report (2011). Cosmetics: Animal testing ban on cosmetics likely to be postponed.
Europolitics.
4) Keville, K. (2002). Compassionate Cosmetics. Better
Nutrition 64(6): 58
5) McKim, J.M.,
Keller, D.J., Gorsk, J.R. (2012). An in
vitro method for detecting chemical sensitization using human constructed
skin models and its applicability to cosmetic, pharmaceutical, and medical
device safety testing. Cutaneous and
Ocular Toxicology 31(4):
292-365.
6) Nature (2005). A less toxic solution. Nature 438(7065): 129-130
7) Nature Editorial (2008). Animal tests inescapable. Nature 453(7195): 563-564.
