The truth behind your favorite cosmetic brands

BY SARINA SANGHVI Staff Reporter

A popular aspect of teenage life is using cosmetics, skincare, and staying up to date on trending products. However, many well-known brands perform cruel and unethical tests on animals or support it behind the scenes, often without the consumer even realizing.

People oftentimes hear the words “animal testing,” but inaccurately interpret what it really means. A common misconception is that animal testing means innocently using cosmetics on animals, such as applying makeup or lotion to them.

“When I was younger, I thought [animal testing] meant literally putting eyeshadow on rabbits. I didn’t know that much about it,” sophomore Ellery Barnitt said.

However, this is not the case. According to the Humane Society International (HSI), animal testing is when procedures are performed on live animals such as mice, rabbits, dogs and rats for purposes such as research of diseases, creating medications and testing the ingredients in cosmetics.

“All procedures, even those classified as “mld,” have the potential to cause the animals physical as well as psychological distress and suffering. Often the procedures can cause a great deal of suffering,” said HSI.

Some common tests include forced chemical exposure to toxic substances, drugs and infectious diseases which causes pain, distress or death. Other examples include inflicting wounds or pain to study the animals or behavioral experiments. Often after experiments animals are killed or re-tested on for more experiments. It is estimated that more than 115 million animals worldwide are used in experiments every year.

The ethics of these procedures are debatable; some argue that it is torturing and killing animals, while others believe it is necessary to create non-toxic and effective cosmetics for humans and advance our knowledge of human biology, health, diseases and new products.

“I don’t think animal cruelty is necessary or ethical. There are lots of way to test products without doing it on animals,” Barnitt said.

People who support animal testing may argue that it is unethical to do these tests on humans, so animals are a better alternative since some are biologically similar to us. However, these tests are not always as accurate as other alternatives, and are far more harmful.

According to HSI, there will be alternatives in the near future to convert from animal testing, to using human cells and cell lines.This as well as new technology from computers can lead to more humane and safe ways to experiment with how different chemicals and ingredients affect humans. Also, many of all of the ingredients being used in newer products have been used in past cosmetics, so testing them on animals is easily avoidable.

“Chemicals in cosmetics are fairly wellunderstood these days because they’ve been around for a long time and new beauty products are just re-made with slight differences, and so testing on animals is just not always necessary,” chemistry teacher Jonathan Holcomb said.

Despite these proposed alternatives, popular brands continue to test their products on animals or support it due to the past reliability on it. When going to buy a cosmetic product, cruelty-free brands often make it very clear that they don’t animal test on their packaging. Yet for brands that do animal test, there is nothing telling you about the harsh reality of what was done to make that product. Packaging will tell you all about the amazing benefits of the product, and not about their unethical ways, which can cause you to unintentionally be supporting it.

“I didn’t even know they supported animal tested when I bought [a Maybelline mascara],” freshman Yaritza Lopez said.

In a poll of 63 Sequoia students, almost all used at least 2-12 products that animal test. Cerave, Vaseline, Aquaphor, Crest and Maybelline being amongst the most popular. Products from such as these that have become prominent on social media, popular amongst your friends, or accessible in retail/ drug stores could have terrible backgrounds, and are not making any efforts to change their out-of-date and unethical ways.

It is important to support cruelty-free brands, and do research before purchasing, and ultimately supporting, brands that animal test. If this was a more common practice, then popular brands would have to start changing their processes and turning to more ethical ways in order to keep their business. “If you buy cruelty-free products it increases the presence of them in that industry, and in turn would help decrease the demand for products from brands that do animal test,” Barnitt said.

Brands such as Aveeno, Bath and Body Works, Benefit, Dove, Maybelline, Neutrogena falsely claim they are cruelty-free on their websites, however other sources explain how they perform animal tests in their ingredients or final products, are owned by companies that animal test, fund animal testing or sell to countries that require it.

“Over my life I’ve seen an increase in labels on beauty products that say “cruelty-free”, because it is more and more on the minds of consumers, so companies and manufacturers of products are going to greater lengths to advertise that they do not test on animals,” Holcomb said.

Even though there is a harsh reality that many of the brands we have grown to love animal-test, there are many amazing crueltyfree brands. Some include The Ordinary, Glossier, Burts Bees, Curology, People of

Color Beauty and Tree Hut.

“We need for issues like this to become less controversial and just have conversations about them and spread awareness,” Holcomb said.

Spreading awareness and supporting cruelty-free brands will lead to a future without animal testing.