Ending cosmetics testing on animals

Our global campaign to end cruel cosmetics

Cruelty Free International leads the largest global campaign dedicated to ending the use of animals to test cosmetics and other consumer products throughout the world. Our highly experienced and passionate team has made real progress around the globe for the countless animals suffering in cruel tests for cosmetics through our positive, innovative and often trailblazing approach.

What we do

Lobby politicians and governments to end the use of animals in cosmetics testing everywhere and forever
Encourage regulators to accept non-animal tests
Mobilise compassionate citizens through high profile campaigns
Promote and encourage companies to go cruelty free by becoming Leaping Bunny approved

The issue

Traditionally, animals have been used in painful tests to demonstrate that cosmetics are effective and safe to use. Yet transferring the results of animal tests to humans has proven to be problematic and misleading in many cases.

Instead, safety can be assured by using approved tests that do not use animals, and by sticking to the many combinations of existing ingredients that have already been established as safe for human use.

Sadly, despite the availability of alternatives, countless animals are still subjected to cruel tests around the world to bring a new eye shadow or cologne to market. In many cases, industry inertia and bureaucracy are the only barriers to switching to non-animal testing methods. It is a sad fact that the only way some companies will embrace non-animal tests is if they are legally required to do so.

Rabbits, guinea pigs, mice and rats are routinely injected gassed, force-fed and killed for cosmetics testing around the world. We believe this is ethically unacceptable and unnecessary.

The solution

In a global market it is important for all countries to ban animal testing for cosmetics to avoid testing simply moving around the world to countries with no effective laws. That’s why we launched our global campaign - to call on governments around the world to ban animal testing for cosmetics.

Animal tests are increasingly being replaced with quicker, cheaper and more reliable non-animal methods. These modern methods are more relevant to humans and have been found to predict human reactions better than the traditional outdated animal tests.

Companies can prove their products are safe by using established ingredients. There are, for example, almost 20,000 ingredients in the European Union’s database for which safety data is available.

Cosmetic manufacturers increasingly accept that animal experiments are unnecessary and those companies that still continue them damage the reputation of the industry. After New Zealand passed its ban in 2015, the Cosmetics, Toiletry and Fragrance Association said that they did not need animal tests, adding, "There might be some perception that we are actually testing within New Zealand so it's actually in the best interests of the exporting industry that we have a ban."

We urgently need a worldwide ban on this cruel and unnecessary suffering. Ricky Gervais

A global movement for cruelty free cosmetics

A million people have added their names to our pledge for a global ban on animal testing for cosmetics. Our pledge went into thousands of The Body Shop stores across 65 countries around the world. It is the largest and most ambitious campaign ever to seek a global ban on the use of animals to test cosmetics.

And it helped put animal cosmetics testing on the agenda in so many countries across the globe for the very first time.

Having a million compassionate voices behind us means we can make real progress for animals suffering in cruel cosmetics tests. Read more about the work we’re achieving around the world.

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