Chapter 7
Conclusions and recommendations
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Experiments to test cosmetic ingredients or products on animals cause pain, distress and death to thousands of sentient individuals every year. This is done in the name of commerce, by an industry which trades in non-essential luxury goods and which profits from animal suffering.
Throughout Europe, and including France, the majority of the public has made it clear that it wants to see these animal tests ended. It is the duty of the government to represent the will of its citizens and the French Government must take action.
Animal tests are largely unvalidated as scientific procedures for predicting human reactions, and are continued through force of habit and convention rather than any confidence in their reliability. It is essential that funds and expertise are directed towards the development and validation of new, humane testing methods which do not cause animals to suffer in the name of vanity. In the meantime, the industry should use the inventory of existing ingredients for formulating new products.
OneVoice condemns the testing of cosmetic ingredients on animals because of the suffering caused. Moreover, the results of animal tests are often irrelevant to humans, because of species differences and the poor design of the tests. This means that the safety of consumers may be put at risk by some cosmetic ingredients which appear to be safe in animals such as rats, mice and rabbits.

OneVoice calls on the government to end today the testing of cosmetic and toiletry ingredients and products on animals.

As interim measures, and to promote the end of animal testing throughout Europe and the rest of the world, OneVoice makes the following recommendations to the French government, MEPs and industry:

– Since government and the cosmetics industry have allowed animals to continue suffering in the name of vanity, they bear responsibility for putting maximum financial and human resources into a national programme for developing and validating non-animal tests.
– The government must abandon its attempt to perpetuate animal suffering and death, and withdraw its case against the European Commission regarding the seventh amendment to the Cosmetics Directive. There are more than 8 000 existing ingredients which are considered safe and can be used to develop new products, until non-animal tests are available for all purposes.
– The French government, and other national authorities throughout Europe, must advise their country’s laboratories that the re-classification of animal tests to avoid the cosmetics testing ban would be unacceptable and a betrayal of the will of the public.
– The government must clarify and explain the unlikely dramatic decrease in animal testing for cosmetics and toiletries in France over the last eight years, and the discrepancies for 1999, and publish corrected statistics.
– French MEPs should take every opportunity to support the proposed ban on animal testing of cosmetics ingredients, as well as pressing for greater EU funding for developing non-animal tests.
– As a member state of the OECD and the EU, France should take a very active role in promoting the rapid acceptance of valid non-animal tests into the OECD and EU test guidelines.
– The EU’s Scientific Committee on Cosmetic and Non-Food Products (SCCNFP) should not limit its acceptance of test data only to non-animal tests which have received Europe-wide regulatory approval, especially if this is delayed for bureaucratic reasons. If the SCCNFP is convinced that a non-animal test method is scientifically valid, it should not wait for EU agreement (although it should facilitate such agreement).
– French representatives on the SCCNFP must urge that data from these humane methods should be accepted by all member states of the EU.