The French say: "Beauty requires sacrifice!". But connoisseurs of beauty have in mind either financial loss, or refusal to do anything for the sake of a bottle of expensive perfume. No one comes to mind in the literal sense of the word "sacrifice" to kill a living being, even if it is an animal. But it is the way most companies and companies engaged in the production of cosmetics and household chemicals do this.
Let us explain what is at stake. All cosmetic products, before starting it in production, undergo numerous tests (testing) in order to exclude the adverse effects of its components on the human body. As a rule, these studies are conducted on animals. The experiments are conducted without anesthesia. The essence of them is terrible: they determine the degree of negative impact of the drug on animals. For example, to determine the irritation of the mucous in case of possible contact with the eyes of cosmetics or soap, rabbits are injected into the eye with a test substance and further changes in the cornea are observed until it completely dies. Extra suffering to the animal brings what it can not rub with the paws of the eyes, which corrodes the substance soaked in it, since the special lock - the collar does not allow it to be done. Rabbits have a special physiology - they do not have tears that can wash away the disgusting muck, so for this testing, people chose them. He gets to other animals - rats, pigs, hedgehogs and many, many other pretty animals. For the sake of our beauty, millions of animals die every year.This prompted animal advocates to deploy the movement "Beauty Without Cruelty", which calls for the maintenance of cosmetics that are untested in animals. Zooprotectives, as they are called, are members of the PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) organization, which means "People for the ethical treatment of animals." The ranks of PETA number more than a million supporters who have a lot of weight in modern society. The ideology of humane attitude towards animals - our smaller brothers - has so mastered the minds of citizens that in a number of European countries laws were passed prohibiting vivisection. The culmination was the decision of the Council of Europe from March 11, 2013 to ban the import and sale of cosmetics with components tested in animals.
Reputable and, of course, sales markets, companies - "monsters" of the cosmetic industry financed the creation of scientific centers to develop alternatives to animal experiments. It turns out that any make-up can be produced using thousands of proven components, which are already thoroughly known, and for experiments use cell and bacterial cultures, plus computer models. For example, for the above-mentioned eye tests, rabbits can be dispensed with, similar statistics "run into" when tested on ordinary chicken eggs. Moreover, such studies, which have received the status of "in vitro", which literally means in Latin for "on the glass," require significantly less financial costs than animals, and allow us to identify the reaction of just human cells to the composition of the lotion or detergent.
On many jars with cosmetics or flasks with household chemicals, there were drawings depicting a rabbit in the background of a triangle or inside a circle, as well as a human hand covering the rabbit (as if ironing). If there is no picture, there may be "NOT TESTED ON ANIMALS", or "GRUELTY FREE", indicating that there is no testing on animals.
Not all cosmetic, perfumery, "shampoo" and other giants from the drug industry are switching to such technologies. Thanks to the efforts of PETA, which controls more than 600 manufacturers, lists of brands that have accepted or reject ethical cosmetics are compiled. On the pages of the media and the Internet, these lists were immediately named "Black" and "White", which are now official documents. Unfortunately, Russia and the CIS countries are the main market for the products of companies using vivisection. Almost 100% of all cosmetics sold in our stores - from the "Black" list. It turns out that buying the tested cosmetics, we, in fact, become complicit in the cruelties against animals! At the same time, we encourage manufacturers of counterfeit products, which do not give a damn about anything at all.
As a resume, we return to the banal phrase: "Beauty requires sacrifice!". Of course, it requires, but let it be a beauty without cruelties.