There’s something you should know, before you brush your teeth or buy another tube of toothpaste: Some companies are still killing animals to test the stuff! We can change that if enough companies insist that the government modernize its regulations and give animal tests the big brush-off.
Medieval stereotaxic devices are clamped onto animals’ heads so that chemicals can be smeared on to their teeth.
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Here’s what happens: 200 baby rats, just 3 weeks old, are purchased from an Indiana supply company and placed in wire-bottomed stainless-steel cages. Twice daily, Monday through Friday, laboratory workers pull the small mammals from their cages, force steel clamps into their mouths to hold their jaws apart and swab their teeth with an anti-cavity dental chemical. After three weeks, the workers kill the rats by cutting off their heads. Then they cut out their tongues, slice open their jaws and examine their teeth. The procedures are called “Biological Tests for Fluoride Dentifrices” and “Determination of Animal Caries Reduction”—puzzling phrases to most of us. But the meaning is deadly to animals.
It sounds like the sadistic act of a mad scientist. But the officials who order this test work for the U.S. government’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the test is required for companies that want to sell a new fluoride toothpaste. But PETA’s RIR Department has learned that the FDA has made exceptions for manufacturers, including Tom’s of Maine, that wanted to market new toothpastes without any tests on animals. This was more confusing than the names of the tests: If some companies can manufacture safe, effective anti-cavity toothpastes without using any animals, why can’t all dental product companies stop killing animals?
RIR director Mary Beth Sweetland took this question directly to the FDA. Wrote Mary Beth, “We ask that you take a personal role in permanently replacing the standard rodent test with those tests found acceptable for Tom’s of Maine’s approval. Other manufacturers of anti-cavity products do not wish to brush the teeth of rats for three weeks and then kill those animals when equally or more effective non-animal test methods exist.”
The FDA’s bureaucratic wheels can turn slowly. Even though we know rats should not die for toothpaste, we need your help to persuade the FDA.
