#SaveRalph Campaign Calls to Ban Animal Testing in Cosmetics CHARLES KRYXIAN LARA COSMETICS EUROPE STATES that cosmetics can help improve our mood, enhance our appearance, and self-esteem, and is an important part of social expression. These products undergo many processes to serve their purpose of enhancing our looks and taking care of our bodies. But little did we know they also serve harm, pain, and death to poor animals, such as rabbits, and monkeys, that these cosmetic companies used as testers. In April 2021, the Humane Society International (HSI) introduced the #SaveRalph Campaign as a movement to stop the suffering of animals at the hands of the big cosmetic companies. Save Ralph is a stopmotion animation film that was combined with the performances by an all-star multinational cast that includes Taika Waittiti, Ricky Gervais, Zac Efron, Olivia Munn, Pom Klementieff, Rodrigo Santoro, Tricia Helfer, and more, Ralph, the main character of the film, is a rabbit and is being used by a cosmetic company in government-required chemical poisoning tests for cosmetics and their ingredients. The film exposed the horrible daily routine of Ralph as a tester in a toxicology lab. The empathetic story of Ralph and many other animals that are suffering from cruelty engages viewers to support the ban of animal testing of cosmetics once and for all. Spencer Susser, the director of Save Ralph, said that the animals in the testing labs don’t have a choice and it’s our responsibility to do something about it.
“When the opportunity came up to create a new campaign for Humane Society International, I felt that stop-motion was the perfect way to deliver the message. When you see the horrifying reality of the way animals are treated, you can’t help but look away. What I was hoping to do with this film was create something that delivers a message without being too heavyhanded. I hope that audiences fall in love with Ralph and want to fight for him and other animals like him so we can ban animal testing once and for all,” he added. According to HSI, rabbits like Ralph are really being neck-restrained and cosmetic products and their ingredients are dripped to their eyes and onto the shaved skin on the back. They’re not given any pain relief and all of them will be killed in the end. Forty (40) countries have banned this kind of testing for cosmetic products, such as India, Taiwan, New Zealand, South Korea, Australia, and more. The European Union banned all animal testing for cosmetics in 2013, yet today this celebrated precedent is being weakened by European Chemicals Agency who demands that cosmetic companies perform new animal tests on chemicals used exclusively in cosmetics. More than 2,000 “cruelty-free” products are being sold worldwide, but HSI warns that these products are in jeopardy if chemical safety legislation continues to demand new animal tests for chemical ingredients used exclusively in cosmetics. No more animals should be harmed in the name of beauty and to HSI President Jeffrey Flocken, “Save Ralph is a wake-up call that animals are still suffering for cosmetics, and now is the time for us to come together to ban it globally. Today we have an abundance of reliable, animalfree approaches for product safety assurance, so there’s no excuse for making animals like Ralph suffer to test cosmetics or their ingredients.”
SCITECH 47
