Over 80 Million animals die a year due to animal testing, yet it is still legal. Letting even 1,000 humans die a year due to laboratory testing would be unethical and illegal, but testing millions of animals is legal and accepted by many people in our society. The fact that animals are not equal to humans doesn't give us the right to allow them to be sacrificed, tortured, and destroyed just so we can wear makeup, perfume, and other beauty products. Animal testing is morally wrong, unethical and most of the time rarely effective.

Hundreds of companies are still giving into the testing of animals. People raise animals, breed them and feed them from birth only to hand them over to a laboratory to be slaughtered, often first being tortured by testing and chemicals. The animals are put in small cages and experience horrible environments. Animals are unable to understand what's being done to them and why. They get sick and sometimes die of agony. To these animals, a bullet would be more welcome than the torture they are experiencing. The animals that are used in testing are defenseless and innocent of any wrongdoing. They are unable to understand what is being done to them and why. The scientists that perform these tests can't honestly say that they have any compassion for living things. Force-feeding substances, harmful chemicals, to animals so their reactions can be observed and recorded until 50 percent of those animals die is wrong. That is what happens to million of animals just so that one product can be put on the market. "It's called LD50 or Lethal Dose Test. The name describes itself well, lethally feeding or injecting animals until 50 percent die, hence the name LD50. (All for animals 1)." Another very common animal testing procedure is the Draize Test, named by the FDA (food and drug administration) after scientist John Draize. The test involves dropping a substance directly into an animal's eyes, usually in an albino rabbit, and then observing the results.

"Two of the main reasons companies continue to use animals to test their products is to determine the possible dangers to human health and to avoid product liability suits. (All for Animals Newsletter)." There is NO law that states any personal care, non-pharmaceutical products are required to be test on animals (Stevens, 1) therefore animal testing can be completely abolished; there are many readily available and reliable methods to animal testing. Most of the personal care production companies could adapt to these methods which are much more cost effective, better at predicting human injury, produce much quicker result, and don't involve animal cruelty. Using chemicals as a way to test products takes only a few days, which is time efficient. This doesn't leave labs waiting for an animal to die just to figure out the effect that product will have on a human, only to remake the product and test it again on another innocent animal.

Although we are progressing in the stop of animal testing, hundreds of companies continue to test on animal. Some of the major companies still remain are; Arm & Hammer, Cover Girl, Mead, Johnson & Johnson, and Procter & Gamble. Those are just a few of the many companies though. The sad thing about animal testing is that it isn't even helpful! Despite what companies claim, products that are harmful to animals will still be harmful to humans whether they are tested on animals or not. As silly as is seems animals don't even use the products that are being tested on them, but those who do use the products don't get tested with the product. The in-vitro meaning "in glass" method of testing, as opposed to in-vivo meaning "whole animal" method has flourished because of advances in tissue culture, and abundance. Using famous figures in history and today to speak out against animal testing may persuade people to protest against anima testing.

"To my mind the life of the lamb is no less precious

than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to

take the life of the lamb for the sake of the human

body. I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the

more entitled it is to protection by man from the

cruelty of man (Gandhi, 4)."

Mohandas Gandhi states that the more precious a life, the more it should be protected, just as a mother would die before she would allow her young baby to die.

It's an easy task to stop buying animal tested products. Revlon and Avon being the first major companies in 1989 to stop testing led the path for many other companies to stop testing. There are lists of products available at the PETA website, allowing you to get a list of all the companies who do and don't continue animal testing. Shopping carefully and protecting our animal can only lead us into a better more enjoyable future.