Animal Testing for Cosmetics

This is going to be a bit of a wordy one so please bear with me!  I will include some cute cat photos to add something fun to look at!

I'm sure it is quite obvious especially if you have followed me for a while that my blog is cruelty free.  I haven't really explained this too much - I touched on it in my About Me section if you have looked at that - so I thought I would kind of explain in a bit more about why exactly I choose to be very selective about what I buy and why it is important.

I can't be exactly sure about when I made the decision to go cruelty-free, or how I even find out that this testing was going on, I'd imagine I probably came across something on the internet!!  Obviously I was well aware of animals being used in medical research which I will not be going into, mainly because I don't know enough about it to have a fully-formed opinion (although I will say that I try my best to avoid charities which put funding into this sort of research), but it wasn't until later when I learned about their use in the cosmetics industry.

Without going into too much detail about what exactly happens (don't worry there won't be any pictures!) I am just going to outline what actually happens to the animals in laboratories, a lot of the time the products are not used for testing, it's more often the ingredients used.  This is why a lot of companies can get away with saying 'none of our finished products are tested on animals'.

Here are a few common processes the animals will be put through:

• Lethal Dosage testing to find out how much of a substance will kill a set ratio of animals.
• Substances dropped into animals eyes to see if any damage is caused.
• They are forced to ingest chemicals.
• Their fur is shaved and substances applied to skin.
• They are often killed after these tests and disected to find if there are any adverse effects to the body or bred to see if there are any birth defects.

On top of this these animals spend their entire lives in tiny cages, they receive no care or affection other than the bare minimum feeding and cleaning, never seeing the light of day.

I have made a page of these lists so you can easily find them but it occurred to me that quite a lot of people won't have visited these.  So here is a list of companies who I consider 'safe' to use, they do not test on animals, nor are their ingredients, or suppliers.  I urge you contact companies yourself to make up your own mind, and to get into the habit of doing it for any brands I haven't mentioned.  I do have a template email which you can find here or at the top of the page, this is what I use so please feel free to just copy and paste if you would like to contact a company about their stance.

Alberto Culver
Almay
Arbonne
Anastasia - Beverly Hills
Barry M
Benefit Cosmetics
BM Beauty
The Body Shop - owned by L'Oreal but none of their profit goes towards animal testing
Boots own brands eg No7, 17, natural collection etc.
Bourjois
Butter LONDON
Chanel
Color Club (Forsythe Cosmetics Group) 
Deborah Lippman
E.L.F.
Eyeko
Front Cover
GOSH
Inglot*
Jemma Kidd Make Up
Laura Geller
Liz Earle - partnered with Avon but remain independent
Lush
Marks & Spencer’s
Models Own
Naked
NARS Cosmetics - owned by Shiseido but are independent
Nubar
NYX
Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics
Pure Face Care
PZ Cussons
Revlon
Sainsbury’s
Soap and Glory
Stila
Sugarpill
Superdrug own brands**
Too Faced
Une
Urban Decay
Yaby
Zoya

*Inglot say “To the best of our knowledge, the ingredients used for our cosmetics are not tested on animals.”
**See my here for more info on Superdrug.

If you want to be 100% safe then the best way is to only use BUAV approved companies as they put the brands under the spotlight and really make sure they are cruelty-free, unlike PETA who just rely on the company being honest with them.

And here is a list of companies who are not cruelty free:

Avon (lied about not testing)
Clarins
Diptyque (they are cruelty free but cannot speak for suppliers)
Elizabeth Arden
Estée Lauder inc. MAC, Bobbi Brown, Origins, Smashbox Cosmetics
John Frieda
L’oreal inc. Garnier and Essie
Max Factor
Maybelline
Olay
O.P.I. (Owned by Coty)
Pantene
Rimmel
Shiseido
Superdrug (BUAV approved but raising money to donate to charities which test on animals)
Yves Saint Laurent
Laura Mercier

I hope that I have given an insight to some people about the truth behind cosmetics and make you think twice about buying certain brands!  If you have made it this far, well done and thank you!!

I would love to know your thoughts on this controversial subject so if you do have any then leave me a comment :)

Here are photos of my cats to cheer you up haha!

Kali

Theo

Tia

Hugo

<3