by  Isabella Blakeley (‘26)

Trigger Warning; Animal cruelty 

Cosmetic and hygiene products are a necessary or fun component of nearly everyone’s life. Subsequently, many people take great care to ensure that the products that they use are a reflection of their views. For example, if someone wants to only have clean ingredients, they would purchase a product with fewer chemical ingredients. Many people want to minimize their effect on the environment and thus purchase sustainable products that can be refilled. Many people also want to minimize the animal testing that is done on their products and thus opt for products with the leaping bunny logo on the back. But what does the leaping bunny mean? What is animal testing and why is its use so controversial? 

Animal testing is “testing that occurs on animals for research, determining the effectiveness of new products and assessing human and community health concerns.” Animal testing has roots that date back to  500 B.C. when the Greeks performed dissections on animals to better understand the ways of living organisms. But animal testing as it is today was legalized in the United States in 1938 with the “Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act”. This allowed animals to be used for research of a myriad of things; not just cosmetics. Animals are selected based on their similarity to humans. For example, rats are often used as testing subjects because they have a lot of the same diseases that humans do. They also share about 95% of human DNA and are not hard to come by, giving researchers an abundant amount of research opportunities. Many companies choose to conduct experiments on animals because they want to ensure their product’s safety for both animals and humans. Many animal activists, such as PETA or The Leaping Bunny protest against the use of animals for testing as it is unethical.

The entire process of animal testing can be viewed as an unethical process. Animals are forced against their will to test products for the purpose of human betterment. Common animal tests include exposure to chemicals by force-feeding, inhalation, or injection via admin or muscle. Animals can be exposed to drugs that are meant to inflict pain, illness, distress or even death to measure thresholds. Prolonged physical restraint or food and water deprivation, infliction of stress to measure tolerance or healing, and many other ways to test the safety or effectiveness of a product. Many animals are killed after an experiment or reused for another experiment until the animal dies. Then this cycle starts anew with the use of “Purpose bred” animals that will keep the research results streamlined.

Many people claim that animal testing is unethical because it is wrong to inflict pain on an animal. But in addition to this, animal testing is often costly and time-consuming. It can take months or even years for researchers to obtain and evaluate data, which may lead to an unprecedented amount of unnecessary animal deaths. In the case of rodent cancer study, it took nearly 5 years and 4 million dollars to purchase, research, and quantify the data on the rodents. Many animal rights activists wonder where the line is drawn when comparing animal testing and animal abuse. Companies like PETA claim that intentionally causing suffering for hundreds of millions of animals is abusive, wasteful, and unethical. 

Animal testing, however, has allowed humans to make leaps for both medical advancements and disease-cure innovation. For example, the rabies vaccine came directly from tests conducted on animals. In another case, cancer treatments such as chemotherapy were tested on mice to determine the dosage level appropriate for cancer patients. Pacemakers, insulin drugs, pain relievers, and blood disease treatment have all been developed because of tests conducted on animals. Most immunizations, including the COVID-19 immunization, have been tested on animals to find an appropriate dosage and concentration. Surprisingly, not only humans but other animals can benefit from animal testing. Feline leukemia, heartworm and other surgical knowledge came from testing animals. Animal testing has also been used to preserve or bring back endangered or extinct species. All of these innovations and many more would have not been possible without animal testing. 

A main problem people have with animal testing is that it inflicts pain on the animals. But, especially back a few decades, the only alternative was and still are humans. These products and drugs have to be tested in some way before their release to the general public. This leads to a rather uncomfortable and unfortunate situation: would you rather have drugs tested on animals before humans for the sake of human safety? 

Luckily, animals are no longer the only viable option for product and drug testing. New technological advancements such as lab products and human stem (and other) cells have allowed the burden of animal testing to be lifted slightly. AI may allow scientists to virtually conduct tests based on the genetic sequence of humans. While this type of testing will help protect both humans and animals, the ethicality of animal testing still remains. It is safe to say that even though stem cells and other tests are becoming more prevalent, animal testing is being used as much as ever. A study by Cruelty Free Kitty states that 88% of major companies use animal testing including Aveeno, Johnson and Johnson, Cetaphil, and L’Oreal. If animal testing is something that you value, make sure to do research on your products or look for the leaping bunny on the back of all of your products. 

(The Leaping Bunny logo is a stamp of certification given to companies that “guarantees that no new animal tests were used on the development of the product before displaying it.”)