vegansaurus!

Cosmetic animal testing banned in the European Union!  »

That’s right! As of March 11, “the marketing, import, and sale of animal-tested cosmetics and their ingredients will no longer be legal in the EU.” Congratulations to PCRM, who did a lot of work lobbying for the ban, and here’s to passing a similar ban in the U.S. Cosmetics don’t need to be tested on animals any longer. Science has moved beyond it; here’s hoping we can move society beyond it, too.

[Photo by Ahmad Hashim via Flickr]

Tons of mice die needlessly for health testing. Thanks, science  »

It’s no secret that loads of mice (literally hundreds of thousands) have been sacrificed to science for “research” purposes to help cure all kinds of human ailments. This has always been a tricky subject for vegans, because, you know, it’s medical ethics, duh. But it turns out that a new study recently reported in the New York Times suggests that all those mice very likely died in vain.

The bottom line of the study is that billions of dollars have been wasted and, like, mice cancer and heart disease is different from people cancer and heart disease. I know the precautionary principle is a moot point when it comes to mice when you’re a big fancy scientist being backed by a big fancy drug company, but I strongly believe that we shouldn’t just kill mice before we’re, you know, sure about this stuff. And it turns out people weren’t. At all. And now those mice are looking down on us from mouse heaven except there is no mouse heaven and oh I’m crying now so just excuse me while I leave out some peanut butter for the neighbors’ mice.

[Photo by Andrew via Flickr]

U.S. military must stop medical animal tests!  »

In its medical training courses, the United States military uses (read: kills) over 7,500 animals every year. This is unnecessary and pretty gross. Of course, the military industrial complex is terrifying (hi, FISA extension!), the official and covert wars conducted in our name are horrific (hey Afghanistan! what’s up, CIA drones?), and the way we treat our veterans is shameful (sorry, dogs; at least there’s IAVA?). But at least we won’t be paying for people to torture pigs and goats, right? Per PCRM:

The massive National Defense Authorization Act, approved last month by the Senate and House of Representatives, contains a provision that calls on the Secretary of Defense to report to Congress by March 1, 2013, on a strategy, including a detailed timeline, for replacing the use of animals with human-based methods. Last night, the president signed the bill into law.

So they’re not going to immediately stop so much as make a plan for stopping, eventually.  Still, better than letting it go on indefinitely, funded by our tax dollars. Isn’t it nice when the government helps ease the burden of complex, tacit social hypocrisy involved in trying live a cruelty-free life?

[Photo by thechoserebel via Flickr]

Good news, everyone: Urban Decay says it will remain cruelty-free  »

Thanks, peta2, for contacting Urban Decay and demanding answers following last week’s announcement that L’Oréal had bought the beloved cruelty-free cosmetics company. Peta2 reports that Urban Decay has “assured PETA in writing that its animal testing policy will not change.”

Are you relieved? I am really relieved. Also super-happy to have an excuse to post a photo of happy bunnies. Cosmetic animal testing is for the jerkiest jerks.

[Photo by Mark Philpott via Flickr]

Pro or con: L’Oréal buys Urban Decay  »

Vegansaurus loves makeup, though we of course only support vegan makeup companies, because duh. Urban Decay makes vegan makeup that is high quality and totally gorgeous;  wearing it makes you look and feel fantastic, for reasons both superficial and profound.

Today, however, devilish old L’Oréal announced that it has acquired Urban Decay. Now, Urban Decay has been owned by luxury brands LVMH and the Falic Group, before being sold to a private equity fund, so it’s not like it’s been sitting alone on a pedestal making sparkly vegan eyeshadow since 1996. And L’Oréal did partner with the U.S. EPA earlier this year to work on eliminating animal testing, however hard you have to side-eye the world’s biggest cosmetics conglomerate promising no more bunny torture to make mascara.

Companies need capital to keep going. We want Urban Decay to continue to produce its wonderful products, create new ones, and make us all pretty without harming animals. A notoriously wicked parent company doesn’t mean all the brands under its umbrella will be wicked, too. What do you think? Will you still buy Urban Decay? Could this push L’Oréal toward ending its animal-cruelty practices sooner? That’d be the best outcome, but how realistic is it?

Life as a lab animal is the worst: Thousands of NYU’s test rodents drowned this week  »

Despite being “one of the largest and most valuable [collection of carefully bred rodents] of its kind in the country,” the thousands of mice and rats living in a cellar in New York University’s Smilow Research Center drowned in the Sandy-related flooding that began on Monday night. The New York Times reports that while most of the test-subject animals housed at the Smilow Center were rescued, workers could not save something like 10,000 rats and mice.

But don’t worry:

Already scientists at two research centers, the University of Pennsylvania and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, have pledged to donate animals to restart some of the Smilow center’s colonies. “That’s the one really positive thing to come out of this,” Dr. Fishell said. “Individuals in the research community, who in most businesses would be considered my competitors, have been eager to help.”

Phew! I know I’m relieved our scientists can get back to torturing those animals in the name of humanity ASAP.

[Photo by Pockafwye via Flickr]

Lush’s new anti-animal-testing campaign is more powerful, less exploitative than PETA  »

Via Ecouterre, we learn of this shocking new ad campaign from Lush, meant to make explicit the horrors of animal testing by using a LIVE (simulated) NUDE GIRL in place of the non-human animal subject. This window display, featuring vegan performance artist Jacqueline Trades, debuted at Lush’s Regent Street store in London on April 25. It coincides with this Fight Animal Testing site and European Union-centered petition.

What does your Vegansaurus think about it? We’re divided!

Meave says:
It’s very PETA, no? I find it significantly less obnoxious than those “Sexxxy ladies in lettuce-leaf bikinis” or whatever outfits for PETA. This is more freak ‘em out than make ‘em want to fuck you, which is appropriate, because animal testing is horrific and should be treated as such. I take issue with the subject of the testing being a nearly naked woman. The female body is 100 percent commodified in Western society, and I don’t think that this campaign recontextualizes it enough to desexualize it, which is to say, as awful as the tests the “scientists” are simulating performing on her, I see “naked lady” before I see “human-as-animal test subject,” and that bothers me.

I wonder how much PETA has ruined the shock value of substituting a human body for an animal’s. PETA uses conventionally attractive (by Occidental standards) female bodies in varying states of undress for essentially every campaign; is it PETA’s fault now I can’t look at this girl without thinking about all the meat-eating, leather-wearing celebrities in the “I’d rather go naked than wear fur” posters, or women wearing only saran wrap? I hate animal testing, but I also hate the exploitation of any body. On the other hand, how many of the products I slap on my face every day exploited animal bodies before they got to my makeup case?* Because you worked with a performance artist, I think you do win this one, Lush. Sign the petition!

Jenny says:
This is pretty horrific, but in an avant-garde kind of artsy way. I mean, just looking at these images is grossing me out, but I can’t stop. Oh those activists, always putting themselves on the line for their causes. And hey, look how much attention and signatures it garnered (nearly 200,000 as of Wednesday night)! Yep, here’s the deal — I’m into it. As long as I don’t have to be the one in the store window, yo.

Isn’t it crazy how art will bring out such intense emotion?! Isn’t it great to really FEEL something? So tell us, what do you guys think? How does this make you feel?

*Actually none, I am a careful makeup consumer.

L’Oréal wants to end animal testing in the cosmetics industry!  »

Ecouterre brings us news that L’Oréal, the world’s largest cosmetics company,* is partnering with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to “expand the scope of the federal agency’s ToxCast assay tool, which screens environmental substances for potential human toxicity.”

L’Oréal already tests with “reconstructed human tissues, automated platforms, and molecular modeling,” using a ToxCast program would make the process faster and even safer. Someday we will live in a world where everything you apply to your face and hair and skin and nails is 100 percent cruelty-free, you guys! We can beat our faces without benefiting from bunny torture! And we’ll all look as perfect as Rachel Weisz!

*They own so many beauty companies, it’s bonkers.