China to Accept Non-Animal Testing Methods for Cosmetic Ingredients

From CosmeticsDesign.com.....good news! Click on the link for the full story.

PETA has been successful in pressing Chinese officials to adopt non animal testing methods as it announces the country is in the final stages of approving the use of its very first non-animal test method for cosmetic ingredients.

PETA Protests Military's Testing on Pigs

I'm late on this one. The protest happened on Wednesday. But it's worth noting that someone out there took some action on this gruesome story.

And that's what I like about PETA and why I recently became a member for the first time. They are fast, organized, committed and they get attention.

A Place to Look For Animal Research News

I stumbled across this site called FiercePharma that has all kinds of news about the drug industry. If you go to the very top, there are tabs for FierceBiotechResearch and other topics.

Note - this company has a lot of industry news sites on a wide range of topics, so they do more then just drug company news. I've never heard of them before.

Japan Hesitant to Move Away from Animal Testing

Interesting article on animal testing and cosmetics in Japan. They still have a lot of work to do in the pursuit of alternatives. They also need the will to change.

Body Shop Not Performing Well for L'Oreal

The Body Shop is causing some headaches for L'Oreal right now.

The Body Shop said that 150 UK jobs are at risk after the French-owned cosmetics retailer announced a restructuring drive.

The company said it was consulting employees about proposals to reduce its global workforce by 275 jobs to make the business more efficient. The retailer is streamlining operations in certain office-based areas, but the reorganisation will not affect store staff.

...The Body Shop recently revealed that like-for-like sales dipped 0.9% to 249.5 million euros (£223 million) in its last quarter.

Parent L'Oreal said the difficult economic climate hit Body Shop sales in Britain, Spain and North America.

I was stunned when Anita Roddick sold the Body Shop to L'Oreal a few years ago. I had read one of her books and had often pointed to her company as an example of a successful marriage between ethics and business. When she sold to L'Oreal, with its questionable history and animal testing, it was a real betrayal of the company's practices and principles (in my opinion.) I know she thought the Body Shop could change L'Oreal, but, come on, how naive can one be...

But it's better than believing she just wanted the money.

Fox Releases Garbage Press Release as "News"

How friggin' lazy can you get. Fox news prints a phony "news" story about a group that favors animal research called Speaking of Research. From the article:

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 28, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- The tide could be turning against animal rights activists who demonstrate on campuses around the nation. Today marks the launch of Speaking of Research (SR: 7.52, -0.05, -0.66%), a student outreach organization, which aims to rally students and faculty in support of lifesaving medical research using animals.

Speaking of Research seeks to challenge animal rights dominance of the isshttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifue by participating in talks and debates on campuses across the country in the coming months. The group's website, http://www.speakingofresearch.org, provides students with the information and encouragement to enable them to speak out on the issue.

Oh no, the tide is turning! Based on what? Because some group funded by animal testing labs creates a front organization to push their agenda. The group behind this is Americans for Medical Progress. Here is their Board of Directors.

Aside from the whole astro-turf aspect of this "story", it pretty slimy for Fox to release this as news. It's not. It's a press release. Since when is it their job to launder this kind of crap and make it news? Oh right, I forgot. It's Fox.

Robots to Replace Animals in Chemical Testing

I keep hearing about all these innovations to replace animal testing...laboratory-engineered human skin, robots, human eyeball replicas, yadda yadda.

Here's another example of something "in development." When is this stuff going to start actually being USED?

Call me impatient.

Researchers from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institute of Health will be working together to help create robots that can test the safety and toxicity of chemicals.

According to the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), more than 100 million animals are used annually in experiments in the U.S., of which 15 million are used in toxicity tests.

The robots would work by testing a cell culture of a chemical using a special computer model. They’ll resemble medical research machines which test thousands of molecules for medical usefulness in just a few days.

If it works, it could mean much faster testing of chemical safety. This is good news for companies as well as health agencies. Products from pesticides to cleaners must be safety tested before being released, so the robots would get products on the shelves or back to the lab faster.

Photo by Nyx.

Former Vivesector Appointed as Head of Food Standards Agency in UK

Colin Blakemore, a professor of neuroscience at Oxford, was recently appointed as head of the Food Standards Agency. He is a man who unapologetically done animal testing (but opposes it for cosmetics), and has had nail bombs mailed to his home for it.

He prefers to reframe the whole debate, to talk of responsibilities, rather than rights. "The reason why I don't mistreat my own cat is not because it has some kind of rights. It's because I try to be a decent person. Our primary responsibility is to our own species. As for, say, mosquitoes, do we have responsibilities to them? No. Do you swat them? Of course. They don't have rights. They're bloody awful, carriers of disease. None of this, ah, pseudo-Buddhism."

It's an interesting article.

Pro Animal Testing Group to March in UK

The group, called Pro-Test (wow, they put a lot of thought into that name) will march in Oxford.

The pressure group Pro-Test is to march through Oxford at noon on Saturday, marking the first year of its campaign to counter intimidation of scientists who experiment on animals.

The group was set up after violent protests by animal rights extremists, notably against Oxford University and Huntingdon Life Sciences.

Its teenage founder, Laurie Pycroft, said the march aimed to defend the right of researchers to work without harassment; celebrate successes in developing treatments for disease; and improve understanding of the need for animal research.

I just thank god these huge multi-national corporations and universities that conduct tests on animals have a teenager to protect them.

Here is a link to their website.

Health Food Trend Increases Animal Testing

It's damned if you do and damned if you don't. In this case, even eating "healthy" can cause animal suffering...although I'm not sure these "superfoods" and supplements are necessarily healthy. Sounds like they are just some marketing ploy to make more profits.

Eat some vegetables instead!

The demand for new health foods [in the UK} has led to a large increase in the number of experiments carried out on animals in the past year, Government figures show.

According to Home Office figures, the number of laboratory tests on live animals in this area of research jumped by 368 per cent from 862 in 2005 to 4,038 last year.

Animal welfare groups say many of the food additive tests are unnecessary and blame the increase on the demand for "superfoods", such as probiotic yoghurt drinks and dietary supplements.

Researchers at the University of Glasgow fed raspberry juice to rats and killed them to study where the juice went in their liver, kidney and brains. A fish supplement for "intestinal health" was tested on rats at the Hammersmith Hospital.

The animals' guts were injured before tubes were forced down their throats to administer the supplement. They were later injected with a chemical to cause their guts to swell before being killed.

In a test to see if the food supplement gingko biloba could lessen pain, scientists at Glasgow Caledonian University injected rats in their paws and then cut them...

"People are unaware of the animal suffering that goes on behind the latest headlines about this new youth-giving fruit or that wonder supplement."

The Home Office figures for 2006 also show a four per cent rise in the total number of animal experiments, to more than three million.

It just makes me sick. How "necessary" are these tests? And is animal testing the only option?

Same old questions with no real answers in sight.

Photo by jepoirrier.

UK Government to Reduce Animal Research

Back on November 19, we posted about an article in Germany's Der Spiegel that proposed that animal rights activists were losing ground in the UK. But now, I see this article that the UK government is funding studies to reduce the use of animals in research. To me, that sounds like a country still interested in animal welfare.

So who's right? Or is this political posturing by new PM Gordon Brown? Somehow, I doubt it. Rabbits and guinea pigs don't vote.

The [UK] government has pledged to double funding to help reduce and replace the use of animals in research...

Funding will rise to more than £5m during 2010-11.

The money will be allocated to the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs). The centre, which was established in 2004, provides a UK focus for promoting and developing alternatives to animal testing and receives just over £2m per year from the government.

"Animal research plays a vital part in medical research and has helped save millions of human lives. Nonetheless, we should always look for alternatives and government is committed to the replacement, refinement and reduction of animals in research. It is an area where we are leading the world," said the science minister Ian Pearson.

"We have a proud history of animal welfare and protection in this country and the work of the NC3Rs builds on that tradition. This rise in funding ensures the centre can increase not only the research they fund but also their impact," Pearson added.

Photo by Shuttermoth.

Outsourcing Animal Testing a Growing Business

Here is an article on CNN about Charles River Labs, which contracts with companies and other entities to do animal testing. Business is booming.

Charles River operates 80 facilities in 15 countries. It also works at customer sites.

"It's all about drug companies having pipelines that are not very good," Foster said. "That means drug companies really have to work hard to replenish those drugs, or their sales and profits will drop precipitously."

Customers include pharmaceutical companies, biotech firms, government research agencies and universities.

"We're actually building huge facilities to do the work for our clients," Foster said. "No drug companies are building new animal facilities."

Not only will new construction solve capacity crunches -- by building facilities closer to customers, shipping costs can be reduced.

The company's capital expenditures have grown from $40 million in 2004 to about $225 million this year, Foster says.

The firm completed a new animal lab in Massachusetts early this year and is finishing a 450,000-square-foot preclinical facility in Reno, Nev., expected to open in January. A 300,000-square-foot lab is under way in Sherbrooke, Quebec.

About 50% of a new animal research building under construction in Maryland will be for work generated by the National Cancer Institute.

China won't be left out, either. Charles River formed a joint venture with a preclinical services firm in Shanghai, where it is building a new 50,000-square-foot facility.

Yes, I can't wait for drug testing from China. That will get rid of those pesky activists. And look at all the wonderful things they've done with toys and dog food!

Photo by Jurvetson

Is Mary Kay Okay on Animal Testing?

Per this page on the Mary Kay website

Mary Kay Inc. does not do animal testing. Mary Kay Inc. has not conducted, or requested on its behalf, any testing of products or ingredients on animals in over 15 years and actively supports the research of alternative testing methods.

So, to check this claim, I "googled" Mary Kay and animal testing.

Per Leaping Bunny, Mary Kay signed a non-animal testing pledge back in 1999.

Mary Kay, Inc., one of the largest and most well-known cosmetics companies, has agreed to sign the Corporate Standard of Compassion for Animals. The Corporate Standard is the most stringent non-animal testing policy in the United States, Canada and Europe.

I haven't found anything to contradict this so far. Please let us know if any of you have other information. It would be great to just walk in to a pharmacy and buy some makeup instead of ordering online.

L'Oreal's Dark History

I was reading this article about the sale of the Body Shop to L'Oreal in 2006. Why Anita Roddick did this is hard to fathom. L'Oreal stands for so many things she campaigned against. I can only guess that either 1) she could no longer run a successful and profitable cosmetics company on ethical values such as banning animal testing or 2) they drove a truck-load of money to her door. Probably a little bit of A and a little bit of B.

However, if you really want to know the kind of guardian that Anita Roddick left her baby with, read this. It shows up towards the end of the article.

Although L'Oreal bombards the media with its corporate responsibility score cards — and I don't doubt the existence of plans to phase out testing products on animals — the company's dark history has just been exposed in a bestseller in France titled L'Oreal Took my Home, by Monica Waitzfelder.

The book details how L'Oreal, a notoriously anti-Semitic company historically, took over the Waitzfelder home in the German city of Karlsruhe (after the Nazis had engineered the removal of the family) to make it its German headquarters. Waitzfelder has run a life-long battle through the French courts to try to get compensation — the case is now to come before the European Court of Human Rights.

The richest woman in France, Lilliane Bettencourt, who controls L'Oreal, won't give an inch. Long after Swiss banks and Australian insurers have made substantial payouts to Holocaust survivors, Bettencourt is holding out — and that's who you're dealing with when you buy your Body Shop soap these days.

Here's a link to the book at Amazon in the US.

Nasty stuff.

Animal Testing Deception at L'Oreal

Okay, so I buy nail polish and I don't want to keep spending my consumer dollars on products that I know rely on animal testing. So, as a consumer, I started some research on who really does and who doesn't conduct animal testing on its products.

I immediately run into the L'Oreal mess. I visited their website and did a search for "animal." According to a terse one-line statement, "The L'Oréal Group has not conducted animal testing since 1989."

Hmmmm....but, in fact, while L'Oreal does not conduct testing, it includes ingredients that have been tested on animals. Therefore, it is neatly sidestepping the issue with the above statement.

Sneaky!

Here is a good web page by that has a letter from L'Oreal posted which addresses their animal testing policy. NatureWatch from England makes the following good points...

* At first sight L'Oreal's animal testing policy might seem ethical; however, EU legislation requires that all newly developed cosmetic ingredients have to be tested on animals to assess safety, until validated alternatives are available.

* Any development of alternatives to animal testing is welcomed, however over the past twenty years, alternatives have been found and validated for only 4 tests. Tests for which there are presently no alternatives include toxicity tests and skin irritation tests, until alternatives to these tests do become available, these tests continue to use animals.

* In citing European legislation, and the legal requirement for compulsory safety testing of chemical substances, the letter sidesteps the real issue, that by not including new ingredients, the need to test new substances on animals would be eliminated.

So, out with L'Oreal and their products. No nail polish for me from that company!