Animal-Tested Cosmetics Banned In EU

In a praiseworthy and long overdue move, the EU has now issued a complete ban on all cosmetics developed through animal testing.  The 27 countries of the EU already had a ban in place for animal testing within the EU, but they have now extended the ban to reject any product that has been tested on animals, regardless of where that testing was carried out.

The anti-vivisection group BUAV and the European Coalition to End Animal Experiments (ECEAE) have been fighting for this change for 20 years, with some very notable celebrity supporters such as Sir Paul McCartney, Morrissey and Sienna Miller.  The group is pressing for a global ban, as there are still many places in the world that victimize our fellow creatures so that we can over-consume vain (and usually ineffective) beautification products.

The EU Commission is working to develop alternatives to animal testing, allocating 238m euros (£208m; $310m) in 2007-2011 for research.
The response? Of course, scorn from the cosmetic industry and appeals to ‘fiscal responsibility’.  Critics, mainly cosmetic firms, are saying that this ban will put Europe at a competitive disadvantage in the global market –neatly exemplifying the hazards of raising the capitalist global market to the level of a God we all must make sacrifice to.   Anything that will move us towards a green and socially just future will almost always involve some ‘competitive disadvantage’ if the ultimate goal is the accumulation of capital through the use of ‘nature’ (or some natural product or process) to sell goods.  In this hierarchical arrangement of market > nature/society/everything else, any thing, creature, or sometimes even people are considered dispensable; ready to be swallowed up by the sacrificial logic of the market.

The line between animals and humans is fuzzy at best.  It is a daily exercise in imaginative delusion that makes us believe that we are different or more deserving of life than any other living, breathing organism on this Earth.  In the pursuit of a just and environmentally sound future, compassion and the democracy of all things –both human and natural– must be prioritized over profit, pillage, and consumption-and-waste driven corporate power.