10 million animals died in 2024 from animal testing, which is higher than the amount of people that live in Washington state. Although animals may not be people, I still believe that they deserve a better quality of life than they get when companies are testing on these animals. Every day, we use products that take away the innocent lives of many animals. Most people find animals as comforting, either having one as a pet or just being around them. Others see animals as something on which they can test their products. When people test on animals, it doesn’t just affect the animal and their life, but also humans and the economy of the world because the substance costs around thousands to millions of dollars just to create wasteful and unreliable experiments. 

Many believe that animal testing is just applying makeup to animals, or they believe that animal testing is the same as animal research. 

Are animal testing and animal research the same thing?

Animal testing is not the application of makeup on animals. Instead, cramming many animals into a cage and forcing chemical exposure in the area of the eyes most likely results in blindness and death as the results. This is not healthy for animals while they are being force-fed, injecting harmful substances, removing some animal organs, ruining the function of their lives, and forced inhalation of chemicals. Therefore, one of the main differences between animal testing/cruelty and animal research is that the animals do not die in the process of animal research. 

Why is animal testing so bad? 

Forcing an animal to die or be put through injections all day is cruelty, and animals feel around the same pain humans do, they even have similar reactions to pain, like screaming. Most of the time, with animal testing, there isn’t much benefit to humans, making the testing even more cruel/unnecessary. Most people find animals as comforting, either having one as a pet or just being around them; others see animals as something they can test their products on. When people are animal testing, it not only affects the animals and their lives but also humans and the economy of the world.

Popular brands that animal test:

• Loreal Paris 
• Benefit cosmetics 
• Chanel
• Kiehl’s 
• La Roche-Posay
• MAC cosmetics 
• Cetaphil
• Clinique 
• Makeup Forever 
• Maybelline 

Cruelty-free/vegan product alternatives: 

• L’Oreal Paris ✘ – E.l.f Comestics ✔ 

• Benefit Cosmetics ✘ – Too Faced ✔ 

• Chanel ✘ – Milk Makeup or Charlotte Tilbury ✔ 
• Kiehl’s ✘ – First Aid Beauty ✔ 
• Cetaphil  ✘ – Byoma Skincare ✔ 
• Makeup Forever ✘  – Rare Beauty, Ilia, CoverGirl ✔ 
• Maybelline  ✘ – Too faced or E.l.f ✔ 

Most of these alternatives may not be the exact same product or formula, but in my opinion, these are some of the closest options to an item that is cruelty-free and vegan. 

Why do companies do animal tests?

A few of the most popular makeup and skincare brands, and even day-to-day life products like cleaning supplies, are animal tested, and this results in companies animal testing to try out their newest products. Companies continuously use animals when releasing a new product to make sure it is safe and up to their standards. Another reason why brands and companies test is so they can make more money. Unfortunately, the animals that these brands use are baboons, cats, cows, dogs, ferrets, fish, frogs, guinea pigs, hamsters, and horses. 

 A product being cruelty-free/vegan means that they have not been tested on animals, products do not contain any animal ingredients, and there is a way to tell if the product is cruelty-free/vegan. Check the back of your packaging to see if there’s a bunny logo, which is called the “Leaping Bunny. When there is a bunny logo on the back of the packaging, it means it has been certified by the “Leaping Bunny” or “PETA.”.  Some brands will not have it and still be cruelty-free, so searching on Google is another good way to know, even if it might not be 100% accurate.

How can we stop or improve animal testing?

One way to take a stand against animal testing is to swap out products once they run out for something cruelty-free and vegan. Another way to benefit from the end of animal testing is to educate others on it, support the leaping bunny program, support organizations that work to end animal testing (donating and advocating), and read the labels or research the product to avoid the ones that are tested on animals. 

Animal testing should be stopped. Some may argue that it is not wasteful to the plant,that nothing wrong is happening, or that the cost is too high to be buying something that is cruelty-free/vegan. Cutting down on items that are safe is not necessarily more expensive; some of the more expensive products or items cost more money than buying something that is cruelty-free. In addition, humans are not benefiting from this other than spending wasteful money on labs that will just be killing animals. This information is a way to save more animal lives because they are just as well as us and deserve the life we do.