Last week, Cruelty Free International was able to announce the publication of a Bill in the Duma (Russian Parliament) to end animal experiments for cosmetics.  The cross-party Bill was launched by Duma deputies Sergei Doronin and Igor Igushin. We are delighted to have helped with the preparation of this and hope that it will be favourably considered by the Duma.

What is really striking here is that the movement to end animal testing for cosmetics is spreading out from the European Union heartland to countries which most people don’t think of as especially interested in animal issues. In recent months, we’ve seen Bills launched in Korea and Brazil, progress in Turkey and substantial progress in China. The writing is on the wall for companies still doing animal testing anywhere on the planet.

We see this is a dividend from the open-minded approach described in our earlier blog. It’s a mistake to think that there are countries where nobody will listen to reasonable arguments. Almost nobody positively wants to make animals suffer, and it’s a key part of our role to reach out to countries that are relatively new to the issue. That’s why we funded the training course in Vietnam to convert from traditional animal testing: where a country is willing to change, we need to encourage it as far as we can.

It’s also one of our priorities to broaden the discussion in these countries beyond cosmetics. For instance, the Vietnamese laboratory that agreed to convert is the State body responsible for consumer-related chemical testing more generally, and of course once an institution is used to using a non-animal method for cosmetics, they use it for testing the safety of other products too.

While this progress is spreading across the globe, we are working to open up the discussion in Britain, the EU and the United States, our traditional areas of strongest support, so that we get much more transparency and much more willingness to move away from the archaic concept that experimenting on millions of animals is the way to make human life better.

It’s one of the most exciting time in our movement’s history, with the tide turning across the globe, and we are extremely grateful to our supporters for making our work possible. Thank you.

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Photo: Cruelty Free International Director of Policy, Dr Nick Palmer with Russian politician Sergei Doronin.