Canada became the 44th country in the world to end animal testing for cosmetic products.
On June 27, Jean-Yves Duclos, the minister of Health of Canada, announced that the government has banned the “cruel and unnecessary testing of cosmetic products on animals in Canada.”
The country amended the Food and Drugs Act to end cosmetic animal testing, meaning companies will no longer be allowed to test cosmetic products on animals or sell cosmetics that rely on animal testing data to establish safety.
With the move, Canada becomes the 44th country in the world to ban animal testing for cosmetics, according to the Humane Society International.
The European Union and its 27 member states, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Norway, Australia, Colombia, South Korea, Taiwan, India, Mexico are some of the countries where animal testing for cosmetics was already forbidden.
Ten states have banned animal testing in the United States, but there is no federal legislation about it.
The E.U. introduced its ban in 2004 and invested millions of euros into research to develop alternatives to animal testing, which helped significantly reduce the practice in the cosmetics industry. According to the Canadian government, animal testing “was rarely conducted” in the country.
In Canada, the legislation was first raised in Parliament in 2015, but the cosmetics industry opposed it because of its broad language.
“It was so badly crafted that if you made a pet shampoo for a dog or a cat, you wouldn’t have been able to actually try it on a dog or a cat to see if they liked it,” defended Darren Praznik, the president and chief executive officer of Cosmetics Alliance Canada, the leading Canadian trade association representing 170 companies of the cosmetics and personal care products industry.
But “we are very pleased to see the government pass this long overdue legislation,” Mr. Praznik said.
Executives of The Body Shop and Lush, two companies against animal testing, were also alongside Minister Duclos at the press conference in Toronto announcing the ban.
The amendment puts “Canada on the right side of history by banning this outdated practice,” reacted Brandi Halls, the chief ethics officer for Lush Cosmetics North America. “We applaud Minister Duclos and Health Canada for bringing forth this legislation and thank all who have made this change possible,” declared Hilary Lloyd, Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Responsibility of The Body Shop North America.
The rule is not retroactive: Products already on the market that originally used animal testing to establish their safety won’t be pulled from shelves.
For Humane Society International, newer forms of assessment like computer modeling or tests using human cells are more effective than animal testing.
Moreover, animal lovers could see an opportunity to decrease animal testing with the rise of artificial intelligence, including in the biomedical industry where millions of animals are used each year in laboratories to test drugs.
In the U.K., labor member of Parliament Steve McCabe, during a Westminster Hall debate called, on the government to set a new path for researchers to use artificial intelligence and other new technologies to test new drugs in the place of experimenting on animals.