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New research by PETA US suggests that at least nine leading cosmetics companies may be quietly breaking UK and European laws by selling products that are also marketed in China, where animal tests are required by law.
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PETA is demanding that the government investigates retailers – including Benefit, Bliss, Caudalie, Clarins, Clinique, Dior, Estée Lauder, Gucci (distributed by Proctor & Gamble) and Revlon – for possible violations of 2013’s groundbreaking EU Cosmetics Products Enforcement Regulation, which bans the marketing of cosmetics products or ingredients that have been tested on animals.
PETA has sent a dossier of evidence and a request for investigation to Attorney General Jeremy Wright as well as Secretary of State for Justice Michael Gove MP and Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills Sajid Javid MP.
Publicly available information from the Chinese Food and Drug Administration shows that cosmetics products, which are readily available on UK stores’ shelves, are also registered in China, a country where tests on animals for cosmetics are still compulsory.
As reported in The Sunday Times, which covered PETA’s research and request for investigation, Estée Lauder admitted these allegations, while the other companies did not deny it.
‘We have documentation that these companies are selling products by the same name both in China, where they have been tested on animals, and in the UK.
‘Fractions of the cosmetics industry are currently embroiled in a legal row with the UK government in an attempt to render the marketing ban of animal-tested cosmetics as meaningless. Once this case is resolved – if not before – PETA is calling on government officials to investigate and take action to ensure that the Cosmetics Regulation is not being blatantly flouted.’
Mimi Bekhechi, PETA Director
As documented by PETA, whose motto reads, in part, that ‘animals are not ours to experiment on’, experiments to assess the toxicity of cosmetics products include, among others, the notorious Draize tests, in which rabbits are placed in restraining stocks so that they cannot struggle or wipe their eyes.
Their eyelids are pulled apart, and chemicals are dripped, sprayed or rubbed onto the eye. In the similarly horrific skin test, chemicals are typically rubbed onto the shaved skin of rabbits to check for the severity of the reaction, after which they are killed.
Click here to find out more about PETA and how you can help stop animal cruelty.
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