“This product has been tested on animals.” “Cruelty-free.” “Not tested on animals.” You see such labels all the time on products - cosmetics, beauty products, but do you ever really stop and think about what these labels mean? What is animal experimentation/testing and is it bad as it sounds? How do you read a label and make sure it’s actually cruelty-free?

There’s a big debate on animal experimentation - some are more people-centric and say it’s helpful for treatments and medications while others are more animal-centric and say it’s wrongful and cruel to animals. According to a survey on Gallup, a news website, 62% of Americans think that it’s morally okay to do animal testing; also according to this survey, younger people were more inclined to say it wasn’t okay to do animal testing. I, personally, as a strong animal-rights supporter believe that experimentation and testing are cruel to animals.

Around 26 million animals are used annually for both scientific and commercial purposes. These animals are used to test the safety of medications as well as the safety of products that we use daily. Over 100 million animals “suffer and die” in the US due to these experiments and tests. Animals that are used for experimentation include dogs, cats, primates, rats, and mice. Experimentation includes the starving, burning, isolation, poisoning, and drowning of animals - and much more. Animals are fed drugs, their body parts are crushed or cut open, are forced to get a disease, and are tortured - the worst part is, it’s without painkillers in the majority of the cases. The animals are often left to die from their suffering/pain.

In these pictures, monkeys heads’ are drilled and objects are screwed on for experimentation purposes.

And here we see a clearly traumatized baby monkey struggling to be free, as well as a baby monkey trying to bring it’s sedated mother back to normality. In the videos of the experiments, laughter is heard at points, showing how cruel the experimenters can be.

Some popular companies that a lot of us use daily, that do test on animals include: L’Oreal, Johnson & Johnson, Revlon and Dove. And this is just a handful of the companies that do testing.

Animal experimentation/testing isn't the only way as some people seem to think. In fact, there's several more feasible alternatives that don't torture innocent animals in the process, ranging from simulators in in vitro testing to computer modeling.

So: how can you help? There’s a lot of small and easy things we can all do to help prevent/reduce animal testing.

First off, please take a moment to sign this petition, which supports laws that end the testing of animals in the cosmetics industry.

You can also take a simple step and sign PETA’s cruelty-free pledge here. By signing this pledge, you’re agreeing to not buy products from companies that torture their animals. By taking this small step - if we all stop supporting such companies - we can make a drastic change to the lives to millions of animals.

But how do you know what’s cruelty-free and what isn’t? Labels! There’s a lot of different logos you can look for that symbolize that a company/product is cruelty-free. First off, the easiest way to determine this is the text:

If, for some reason you can’t find that text, look out for two pictures in particular. The first is of the Leaping Bunny:

And the second is of the PETA Bunny:

Both of these symbolize that a company is cruelty-free! Companies go through special processes to get these labels on their products and to prove that their products are cruelty-free.

When learning more about animals experimentation and cruelty, AWARENESS is the biggest key! A lot of people aren’t fully aware of what happens in the labs and what exactly animals go through. So make sure to educate yourself and the next time you want to get that shampoo you love so much, think about what the animals had to go through for that one product.