Yesterday I was watching a YouTube video by a girl named Tessa Violet. It was called "How cruel is my makeup bag," and, in the video, Tessa goes through her make up bag to find out how much of her make up is cruelty free. What isn't cruelty free she puts a piece of tape on as a reminder not to buy that product again; the site she gets the info from can be found here. Now this got me thinking: since there are so many people against testing on animals, why do we still do it?
Well, in 1938, the United States Congress passed the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act because of the public issues and horrifying events that involved untested products. We've been testing drugs, food, and make up on animals for 78 years. The bottom line is that we do it for our safety. But, you see, there are valuable arguments for why we should get rid of animal testing altogether and for why we should keep it around. I'm going to go over a few points from each side.
I'm going to start by explaining the difference between a cruelty free product and a vegan product. A product that says it's cruelty free means there is no animal testing at any point in the process of creating the product. A common practice is for companies to refrain from testing their final product on animals, but sometimes test at particular points along the way of creation of the product. They might also use some ingredients that have been animal tested by third parties. Which means, even if the packaging says it is cruelty free, but there's an ingredient in it that was third partying tested, it is in fact not cruelty free. The packing is selling a lie.
Now, a vegan product is defined as a product that doesn't have any animal ingredients or animal derived ingredients. So ingredients like honey, lanolin, collagen, albumen, carmine, cholesterol, gelatin, beeswax, etc are not vegan. Some people believe that, if a product is vegan, it is cruelty free, and this is not true. They are two different things; the term vegan doesn't have the same meaning as cruelty free. Companies know this and they use this to their advantage by only making their products vegan friendly instead of cruelty free. A great tip for when you are unsure if a product meets your requirements is to ask for help or to look it up using the site I linked earlier.
For most people, the reason why they want products to be vegan and/or cruelty free is because it is unfair and painful to the animal species we are testing on. Personally, I wouldn't want somebody testing products on me, since I have really sensitive skin. I have to be super careful with what I put near my skin. On the other hand, testing on animals has done good in the world. For example, people like me are able to have specialized products for our skin so we don't have red skin all the time. We test drugs on animals to find drugs that help us, and to find drugs that help the animals, too! You have to test things to find what works. That's just life.
After considering these arguments, I'm probably going to try to find more cruelty free products so I can use as few cruel products as much as possible. Animals have feelings, too, they just don't have a voice we understand.
