PRETTY HURTS
A survey of any group of Americans will likely reveal that most use some kind of beauty product each day. Paradoxically, a poll of those same people might also point to a shared perspective: we are all disturbed by the idea of terrified rabbits in laboratories—their skin oozing with sores—being forced to undergo painful experiments for the hair products, lip balms, moisturizers, and tinted sunscreens we use every day. We all want to look good, but we’re not barbarians.
For years, however, animal testing has been an integral part of getting beauty products to the market. And as more consumers wake up to the nightmarish realities of how animals are treated for human use, it’s from within this contradiction between consumerism and ethics where a call for kinder cosmetics is roaring louder and louder.
Recent data suggests that as many as 70 percent of beauty-product devotees worldwide want animals removed from the cosmetics-testing equation. “For the cosmetics industry as a whole, cruelty-free is the fastest-growing trend,” says Troy Seidle, Humane Society International’s Vice President of Research and
