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No to animal cruelty. This is what the cosmetics brands Dove and The Body Shop are asking the European Chemicals Agency, which wants to carry out new experiments on animals.
Open your eyes: this week in the streets of Paris, those of Berlin, Madrid or Milan, it will be possible to see a work of art representing a giant white rabbit escaping from the hands of a scientist. Next to it, the slogan “join us to end animal testing and save cruelty-free cosmetics in Europe”. This street art illustrates the threat posed by the new requirements of the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) in terms of animal testing. It is signed Nina Valkhoff, artist and international activist from the Netherlands.
The brands The Body Shop, Dove as well as the main international animal protection organizations such as PETA, Eurogroup for Animals or Cruelty Free Europe, are at the initiative of this campaign. The objective is to maintain the laws that prohibit animal testing and in particular the testing of cosmetics in the European Union. They want to mobilize 1 million European citizens in one year to sign the European Citizens’ Initiative, which alerts the European Commission.
New requests for animal experiments
As a reminder, since 2013, the marketing of cosmetics tested on animals has been prohibited and since 2018, animal testing has been banned worldwide by the European Parliament.However, the European Chemicals Agency has been planning since 2020 to resume certain animal experiments. The reason ? Evaluate two chemicals: homosalate and 2-ethylhexyl salicylate.
A decision against which Dove formally opposes: “We firmly believe that animal testing has no place in beauty products or their ingredients and we have been the first to provide safe, non-animal alternatives for evaluating the safety of products and ingredients since many years. This commitment drives us to take urgent action to protect the EU animal testing ban.”says Firdaous El Honsali, director of global communications and sustainable development at Dove, who hopes to block this decision.