FINALLY! EU BANS SALE OF COSMETICS TESTED ON ANIMALS
It’s officially official.
Its been 20-plus years in the making, and there will finally be a full ban on the sale of animal-tested cosmetics in Europe effective March 11, 2013.
Largely due to efforts by the European Coalition to End Animal Experiments, anyone who wishes to sell new cosmetic products and ingredients in the EU can’t test them on animals anywhere in the world. This directive includes all cosmetics from toiletries and beauty products to soap and toothpaste. The animal rights group has been working behind the scenes for more than 20 years to move this ban through despite lots of petitions and legislative foot-dragging.
But the final word came from EU health and consumer commissioner Tonio Borg in a recent letter to the animal testing campaigners: “I believe that the ban should enter into force in March 2013 as Parliament and Council have already decided. I am therefore not planning to propose a postponement or derogation to the ban.”
Such testing is banned in the Netherlands, Belgium, and the United Kingdom. There are no such regulations in place in the US and Canada, where the onus is on companies to make sure their products is safe for human use. Whether or not they test products of ingredients on animals is up to them. In parts of Asia and South America, however animal testing is a legal or regulatory requirement.
Want to make sure your cosmetics are “cruelty-freeâ€? People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) makes it easy with their user-friendly searchable database of companies that do and that don’t test their products on animals!
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