Proposed new federal cosmetics legislation would vastly increase testing on rabbits and other small animals. Please join an army of voices to speak for these little ones who have no voice.
The Safe Cosmetics and Personal Care Products Act (SCPCPA) is the wrong answer to ensuring consumer safety. Precautionary in nature, it calls for additional testing on thousands of cosmetic ingredients (98%) that are currently recognized as non-toxic due to their chemical makeup. Even natural ingredients and ingredients with a long history of safe use would not be exempt. The additional tests would be animal-intensive, long-term, repeated-dose tests.
IT’S INHUMANE. Over 10 years, small-animal testing would dramatically increase, by one to 11.5 million animals. For repeated-dose tests, the testing is always lethal to the animals.
IT CAN’T ACHIEVE ITS GOAL. In 10 years, with millions of animals killed, nearly half of cosmetic ingredients in use would still be untested, because the animal tests and evaluation process are time-consuming.
IT WOULD CRIPPLE THE US INDUSTRY. Repeated-dose animal tests are not only inhumane, they are expensive. Conducting such tests on all existing and new ingredients would impose huge costs, while limiting US exports to the world market, which continues to move away from animal-tested products.
THERE’S A BETTER WAY. Alternative, non-animal methods for repeated-dose tests are in development. These high-throughput methods will provide fast, humane, cost-effective tests that are more accurate than animal testing in assessing chemical safety for humans.
At the current rate of development, these alternative tests will not be ready for about 10 years. The Act may slow development further by diverting resources to a massive new animal testing program. What’s the right answer?
SPEED UP ALTERNATIVE TEST DEVELOPMENT. Once available, alternative methods will allow rapid evaluation of all ingredients. Speeding their development will achieve ensured consumer safety faster than the Act’s plan, without causing animals to suffer and without compromising a key industry. Until these new methods are ready, if the FDA believes an ingredient may pose a potential threat, let’s just drop the ingredient. We have more than 15,000 already. Surely, we can make do.
YOU CAN HELP!
Write to your representative in the US House and to the FDA. Tell them animal testing for cosmetics is unacceptable. Direct them to focus their attention on alternative methods. In just a few minutes, you can give the small animals a voice. Legislators give great weight to letters, so if you can do just one thing, this is it. Follow the links at the top right of this page to find the email addresses and sample letters.
Sign the petition to Congress and the FDA. The FDA and the Act’s authors have indicated that they believe the animal welfare community is not significant enough to matter. Consequently, they have excluded animal welfare groups from negotiations about cosmetics testing. A petition signed by an army of us will alert them to reconsider their position. The petition will be given to all Congressional representatives involved in cosmetics legislation and to the Commissioner of the FDA. We hope to have 1,000 signatures by the end of June, when the petition will be submitted.
The Petition requests your name and your email address to identify you uniquely (to avoid duplicate signatures), but you will not be added to a mailing list unless you choose that option when you sign the petition. Your information will not be shared with any third party or used for any other purpose.