Since I was a kid I always thought it meant applying makeup or skin care products on animals topically. But what is the real act behind animal testing (cosmetics)?
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It’s not just makeup on bunnies. They sometimes force-feed the animals or expose them to chemicals to see if it’s toxic. The sad thing is, there are modern alternatives now but some companies still stick to old methods. 💔
Animal testing for cosmetics usually involves exposing animals like rabbits, guinea pigs, or mice to the ingredients to check for allergic reactions, toxicity, and other harmful effects. It’s pretty messed up if you think about it. They do all kinds of painful tests, like dripping chemicals into their eyes or forcing them to ingest stuff, just to make sure it’s “safe” for us.
It’s not just about applying makeup. They actually use animals to test the safety and effects of chemicals in these products. Unfortunately, this can mean anything from skin irritation tests to force-feeding animals the ingredients to see if there are any toxic reactions. It’s controversial because there are ethical concerns and alternative testing methods available now.
It’s not just about makeup! They actually do things like force-feeding products to animals, applying chemicals to their skin, and even injecting substances. It’s pretty awful, honestly.
It’s not just skincare, unfortunately. They basically test for allergic reactions, toxic effects, and other safety concerns by applying products to animals (like rats, mice, rabbits) or even having them ingest it. It’s pretty messed up. Some get skin irritation, some might even die from it. There are alternative methods now, but the industry isn’t fully on board.
There’s a few things to understand here
1. The vast majority of materials involved in cosmetics have not changed in decades, and it is more about reformulation of the same stuff over and over. If you see a company say “we don’t test on animals!” then you can typically turn over the bottle and find very common ingredients on the backside. They don’t test on animals *right now* because the ingredients were already tested on animals decades ago.
2. Animal testing is both time consuming and expensive. There’s strict guidelines on how it can be done and it requires specialized training.
3. Scientists are not, yknow, psychopaths. They aren’t torturing animals for no reason.
Safety documentation is required for anything that a human might touch. However, since point 1 above is a thing the vast majority of test cases are things that have been found to be safe and therefore testing is unnecessary or there is a very small chance of a negative reaction. It’s more for novel (brand new) formulations that it would be an issue, using chemicals that are not typically used in that process. In that case it comes down to harm reduction; yes it is terrible to have to determine the LD(50) of a chemical, but those regulations were written in blood. There’s alternative methods that can be used *up to a point* and they are used where they can be used, but sometimes there just isn’t any way around it.
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