DIFFERENT TESTING POLICIES
Whilst waiting for legislation, some companies responded to the public’s demand to take animals out of cosmetics testing by adopting their own voluntary code and publishing their own non-animal testing policies.
They clearly laid out for customers what their stance was and what rules they had set themselves, so that customers could could make a choice to buy.
Also, some animal protection groups around the world set up Cruelty Free Cosmetics schemes that companies could join.
These schemes set a standard that companies must meet, then they pay the license fee and can display the scheme logo on their products.
This gave companies an accredited scheme they could join and could show their customers that there was external monitoring of the cruelty free promises they were making.
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It also gave customers an easy reference point – you could simply look for the logo instead of having to write to individual companies to ask their policy.
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But company voluntary codes of conduct, CRUELTY FREE SCHEMES and LOGOS are only needed where there are NO LAWS TO PROTECT ANIMALS.
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If there were strong laws, then EVERY company would be forced to be cruelty free, instead of just nicer companies doing it from choice.
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In 1993 victory happened !! In response to all this public lobbying, legislation was passed by the European Parliament to control the use of animals in cosmetics testing.
THE COSMETICS DIRECTIVE:
of finished
products on
animals.
individual cosmetics
ingredients on
animals.
Europe of
cosmetics that
have been tested
on animals.
Because if you only ban finished product testing, then companies could test individual ingredients.
Because this still leaves a loophole. European companies could just get their animal testing done in other parts of the world, and companies based outside Europe could sell their animal tested products in European shops.
With an EU wide ban on testing the finished products and their ingredients – products made in Europe are fully covered.
With the additional EU wide ban on the sales and marketing of animal tested cosmetics, European companies can’t switch their testing to other parts of the world, and non-EU cosmetics companies can’t sell their animal tested products in our shops. This gives the fullest protection to animals.
When this legislation is fully enforced, it will offer good protection to animals from that most frivolous of animal testing, that for vanity products.
There are problems getting this legislation
FULLY ENACTED at the moment.