Why Is Animal Testing Unethical

Every year, it is estimated that hundreds of millions of animals are used for experiments worldwide (Cohn). In those millions, an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 animals are used to test cosmetics alone (“About Animal Testing”). The tests are meant to irritate the animal’s skin and harm them for the sake of testing. These processes have been done for many years, but with the rise of new technologies and discoveries, there is no reason that companies should keep doing it. Along with this reason, animal testing of cosmetic products should not be allowed because it is cruel and inhumane, there are other effective alternative methods, and it simply isn’t necessary anymore.

Inhumane and Cruel

First and probably the most obvious reason that scientists

For one, lists of ingredients that are safe have already been obtained through years of past testing. Therefore; companies need only to look at those lists to see which ingredients are harmful and which are safe (“Do Cosmetic Companies”). Companies, then, can just choose ingredients from the “safe list” to use in their products without having to go through the animal testing process over and over again. In addition to the “safe list,” corresponding lists of harmful ingredients also exists making animal testing a useless and impractical process (“Do Cosmetic Companies”). If that is not enough, animal testing is also a time-consuming and resource-intensive process that yield no new results from the ones from past tests (“About Animal Testing”). Because of this, animal testing of cosmetics should no longer be done today. The truth is that these tests just don’t benefit anyone – human consumers, science, and especially not animals – anymore, so isn’t it time to just leave it all in history where it

But as mentioned above, animal testing is now unnecessary because of information already yielded from past tests. Today, being tested on animals doesn’t guarantee that a product is safe. Firstly, animal testing doesn’t always accurately predict human reaction to an ingredient because of the complex relationship between an organism’s higher functions and their underlying biology. This is illustrated by the instances where drugs that were shown to be safe on animals during tests proved to be dangerous when used widely on humans (Fellenz 73). More relevant to the beauty industry, however, is the fact that many brands (namely U.S. brands) that test on animals continue to put harmful ingredients into their products, meaning that being tested on animals doesn’t ensure that a product is safe (“International