This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at U Toronto chapter.

Why do we wear cosmetics? To look better. It’s not a necessary thing for us to have. Our cosmetics being tested on animals to ensure their safety for us, becomes nothing but a trivial non-issue, despite them enduring plenty of cruel, painful experiments for such a shallow cause.

Let’s look at what laws say about animal testing for the purpose of cosmetics in Canada and elsewhere in the world, and try to look at what alternative brands we can buy for our cosmetics to ensure that our purchases aren’t contributing to more animals being hurt unnecessarily.

Animal Testing in Canada and Around the World

In Canada, there is actually no law that says companies must animal-test their products before selling them to us, yet many companies test their ingredients on animals anyway.

It’s also because they may want to sell their products in China which requires animal testing by law. But still, they test all of their products the same way.

Despite having no requirement for animal testing, this does not mean that there are laws against it. Canada allows it. However, one of the largest markets for cosmetic products, the European Union, has actually banned it entirely.

Canada, in mid-December, had Bill S-214 pass its second reading in the senate. This bill is also known as the Cruelty-Free Cosmetics Act. It will prevent animal testing for cosmetics, joining the EU, as well as countries like India, Israel and Taiwan who have banned it. It is now being sent to one of the Senate committees for further review. If this is passed, it will be a huge step in stopping something highly unethical that companies do just to sell us beauty products.

There is no reason we should not be following through with this. That is especially true when looking at how useless and cruel animal testing is.

What is the Point of Animal Testing?

Animal testing has been proven to be extremely outdated. Many of the animal testing procedures were developed in the 40s and 50s, without any updates made to them. Therefore, as far as experiments go, they aren’t very accurate. Furthermore, it’s not certain that the way these products react on animals is the same way they would react on humans because of our clear differences.

More than just not being accurate, they’re extremely cruel to the animals involved in the tests; they endure a lot of pain and possible blindness to test things like whether products can cause eye irritation. I don’t really want to support something so unethical.

We have many ingredients that are used in cosmetic products that have already been proven to be completely safe, so there is no real reason to be testing any of this on animals. There are also plenty of non-animal based models that are used in order to test products.

There is even less purpose for any of this if testing on animals isn’t yielding accurate results; instead, their lives are being thrown away for nothing.

Which Brands Test on Animals?

Let’s try not to ignore the problem at hand here and look at what brands actually test on animals. Not every company in the world tests on animals, and plenty of brands are completely cruelty-free, but these in particular are not:

Avon
Covergirl
Estée Lauder
L’Oréal
M.A.C. Cosmetics
Mary Kay
Maybelline
Revlon

A lot of brands you know and recognize test on animals. I was surprised by M.A.C. especially because I like a lot of their products.

Hearing about the fact that animals go through pain just to test a product to go on my face, and that these are some companies that do it, made me just a little disgusted that I put something like that on my face; it’s incredible how finding something out like this can change your view entirely over a product you really liked.

Which Brands Don’t Test on Animals?

Now, let’s look at some brands that don’t test on animals:

Urban Decay
Nyx
LUSH
Smashbox
E.L.F.

Less well known brands exist in this grouping although these are a few easily recognizable ones when it comes to cosmetics. These are easy enough to find, and we should opt for brands like this where possible. I was always a huge fan of LUSH myself when it comes to things like soap especially. Urban Decay also has some nice foundation. There is no quality reduction when it comes to brands that do test on animals versus brands that don’t, so we’re not losing out on anything by just purchasing the ones that don’t.

It’s hardly a convenience or price thing either, as E.L.F is fairly cheap as far as cosmetics go and many of these brands (and others) can be found just about anywhere.

So, What Next?

When it comes to your makeup brands, or even soap and shampoo, it’s easy enough to avoid those brands which do test on animals. It’s not difficult to find companies which have decided on the alternative on using some of the many ingredients we’ve already deemed safe in order to make their products.

It’s not necessary for us to cause another creature pain just to make ourselves look better; instead we can pick makeup brands that don’t test on animals. There’s a clear alternative available and that we can choose to pick, rather than turning a blind eye to the problem.