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Because you're worth it

Consumer power and legislation have spurred cosmetics firms to devise new ways to assess their products for safety. Welcome to the end of animal testing.

The most infamous test is certainly the Draize eye test, in which ingredients are dripped into the eyes of rabbits to test the effects on the cornea. The test can cause anything from mild itching and burning to corrosion and even blindness. ECVAM is currently considering about a dozen different alternatives, one of which involves the use of cow eyeballs discarded during the slaughtering process. In eight different studies, cow eyeballs were brought into contact with some 158 substances and then checked for changes in the opacity and permeability of the cornea. Evaluating the studies, experts agreed that the bovine tests could be employed for effective screening of aggressive irritants.

Still, some think that live animal testing is the best option—and that those live animals should be human beings. “We don’t feel that it is necessary to test the products we develop on animals when we can do it with people instead,” says Steen Resen, export manager at Urtekram, a small Danish natural-cosmetics-and-food company. “And we are very serious about that.”

When the firm’s R&D department has concocted a new shampoo, for instance, samples are handed out to staff volunteers who take them home and use them for a couple of weeks. If side effects arise, they are duly noted—as is the texture of the foam and the nuances of the smell. “It feels good to be a human guinea pig and get some real hands-on involvement in the development process,” argues Urtekram Product and Communications Manager Sanne Lindhardt, who has been part of some 100 harmless tests with hair-care products, body scrubs and deodorants. “And it feels great to save some animals.”

The days of cosmetics testing on animals in the EU are numbered, but that isn’t true elsewhere. In many countries, including the United States, animal testing is still in use. While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration supports the development of alternative safety-assessment procedures, no American ban on the practise is in the offing. “Our final goal is that our validated tests become an OECD-accepted methodology,” says ECVAM’s Hartung. “Once tests are performed according to that organization’s guidelines and its principles of good laboratory practise, the results have to be accepted by other countries. This mutual acceptance avoids the need for companies to repeat experiments for authorization to market products abroad.”

Still, the cosmetics industry in the EU is proving it can be rabbit-free. Given the billions consumers spend on beauty products every year, it’s worth it.

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