Given my recent explorations into greenwashing, I was unsurprised to find that animal testing may well belong in that category of “claims made without validation.”
I’m aware that animal testing is funded, allowed, even encouraged - I’m especially aware of it living as I do near the University of Minnesota, where a great deal of medical research goes on, and where, consequently, a great deal of protesting follows.
As far as my personal position on animal testing goes, it may not be a popular view, but I prefer to be honest:
- Under no circumstances should cosmetics be tested on animals. EVER. If you’re putting lipstick on a pig, you’re swine.
- I have had many relatives die from cancer. I would like cancer to go away for every living being. Because I would like cancer to go away, I am willing to live with the suffering of some animals, since the Geneva Convention rules out excess use of testing on violent Death Row inmates, my preferred alternative.
- If a really excellent alternative to animal testing exists - something that could happen if we could get over our superstitions about cloning technologies - it should be used.
As to the FDA, there reads a hands-off tone as far as regulations of animal testing goes:
“Animal testing by manufacturers seeking to market new products may be used to establish product safety. In some cases, after considering available alternatives, companies may determine that animal testing is necessary to assure the safety a product or ingredient. FDA supports and adheres to the provisions of applicable laws, regulations, and policies governing animal testing, including the Animal Welfare Act and the Public Health Service Policy of Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. Moreover, in all cases where animal testing is used, FDA advocates that research and testing derive the maximum amount of useful scientific information from the minimum number of animals and employ the most humane methods available within the limits of scientific capability.”
They do, however, link to the National Toxicology Program at the Department of Health and Human Services, where alternatives to animal testing are researched.
