Thanks to a grant from PETA, scientists in China are learning how to test cosmetics in a test tube instead of on animals. The Institute for In Vitro Sciences (IIVS), a global leader in the advancement of alternatives and known for its brilliant work in helping corporations switch from animal to non-animal testing, just held a seminar at Beijing Technology and Business University (BTBU) to teach Chinese scientists how to test cosmetics ingredients without using animals. The training was made possible by a new grant to IIVS from PETA—the second grant that we've given the group for its international work—to help purchase equipment needed for the course. PETA first became involved following our discovery that Avon, Mary Kay, and Estée Lauder had been secretly paying for tests on animals despite many years on PETA's list of companies that don't test cosmetics on animals.

© IIVS

A Change Coming to China

The Chinese government requires tests on animals before many cosmetics products can be marketed in that country. PETA (along with our friends at PETA Asia) is working to change that, and one key is having scientists who are ready to implement non-animal (in vitro) test methods. BTBU is home to the largest university program in cosmetics science in China, and the school is establishing a new laboratory to teach and conduct in vitro testing. About 30 students and faculty members took part in the training.

With a $33,000 PETA grant—thanks to the McGrath Family Foundation, whose support makes this possible—IIVS was able to train participants on a procedure that can be used in place of the cruel Draize eye irritancy test performed on rabbits. As Dr. Rodger Curren, IIVS' president, explained:

Support from PETA has allowed the university to expedite the incorporation of hands-on training in non-animal (in vitro) methods to undergraduate, graduate and faculty at BTBU. Both faculty and students are enthusiastic about the training and planning for future sessions has already begun.

What You Can Do

Please buy cosmetics and personal-care products only from companies that don't test on animals, and tell Avon, Mary Kay, and Estée Lauder that you won't buy their products as long as they fund animal testing.

The photograph is shocking. Dead monkeys, piled high in garbage cans. If an ordinary picture is worth a thousand words, this one screams them in horror. Even so, everyone should see it because it deserves to become the image that immediately springs to mind when thinking about primates in laboratories and the airlines responsible for transporting them to their deaths.

A Waste of Lives

The photo comes from a new investigation by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) documenting how Noveprim—a company owned in large part by Covance—has been killing off monkeys simply because they are not the size that experimenters desire. Noveprim abducts wild monkeys from their homes on the tiny island of Mauritius for breeding and sale to laboratories in the U.K. and the U.S.

The sight of the lifeless monkeys discarded like crumpled paper speaks volumes about the experimentation industry's absolute disregard for animals' lives. The monkeys were reportedly healthy, so at a minimum, Noveprim could have had the decency to release them back into the wild—but decency would likely be a hindrance to snatching and trafficking living beings.

Rationalizations Are the Real Rubbish

Air France is reported to be the only airline still shipping primates to laboratories from Mauritius. Earlier this year, PETA was successful in stopping one such shipment, and this new investigation underscores why Air France should ground these flights permanently.

What You Can Do

Please join PETA in urging Air France and other airlines that still ship monkeys who have been ripped from their homes to laboratories where they will be tormented and killed to wash their hands of the whole dirty—and deadly—business.

A chemical-testing program put in place by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1998 had the potential to cost millions of animals their lives in laboratory tests. But as a newly published review by PETA scientists shows, a fraction of that number were used after PETA reached an agreement with the EPA that established groundbreaking guidelines for the project.

Chemical Warfare

The High Production Volume (HPV) Challenge Program was developed in closed-door meetings with the American Chemistry Council and the Environmental Defense Fund and was launched without any public review or comment—but it didn't escape PETA's notice.

After months of discussions, congressional testimony, and public education tactics—including sending a giant "bunny" to follow then–presidential candidate and chief HPV supporter Al Gore on the campaign trail—PETA reached a historic deal with the Clinton administration that resulted in the EPA's issuing guidance on reducing animal use to participating chemical companies.

As the program dragged on for more than a decade, either PETA or the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine reviewed and commented on every test plan in which animal tests were proposed in order to ensure adherence to the guidance.

Millions Spared

PETA scientists' review of the HPV program has now been published in the prestigious, peer-reviewed journal of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Environmental Health Perspectives. The review shows that animal welfare guidance was inconsistently applied by both chemical companies and the EPA.  127,000 animals were used throughout the program—a heartbreaking toll, yet a much smaller number than the 3.5 million who would have been killed in a worst-case scenario.

Grouping similar chemicals and submitting existing test data saved the largest number of animals. Combining tests, using the weight of existing evidence and experience, and replacing animal tests with modern, superior non-animal methods further reduced the number of animals used.

What You Can Do

While the agreement that PETA secured in the HPV program saved millions of lives and represented an important step forward, inflicting unnecessary suffering and a miserable death on even one animal is unacceptable. PETA won't rest until laboratory experiments on animals are consigned to the history books—and you can help make that happen!

For more than two decades, Revlon was a member of PETA's Caring Consumer program and refused to allow animals to be poisoned, burned, and blinded in tests of its products. But the company is now on the "Do Test" list after Revlon started selling products in China where animal tests are required for most cosmetics. Although PETA has asked Revlon numerous times to come clean about whether it is paying for animal tests overseas, the company won't say—which, to us, says it all. We are now stepping up our involvement with Revlon in a very different way—we're headed to the company's boardroom.

We bought stock in the company because as shareholders, we can demand transparency about animal testing activity and also work in yet another way to get the tests stopped.

We've also set up an action alert that our supporters can use to e-mail Revlon and tell the company that consumers have a right to know whether its makeup is being tested on animals. Supporters can then tell everyone they know not to buy Revlon products until the company cleans up its act.

Many compassionate companies, including Paul Mitchell and Urban Decay, have held true to their cruelty-free principles and will not sell their products in China because they do not believe in funding animal tests. PETA is helping to fund scientists working with China to help the country institute non-animal tests, and until those tests are available, Revlon should pull its cosmetics off Chinese shelves, too. In the meantime, conscientious consumers can shop from a long list of companies on PETA's cruelty-free list that don't harm animals at home or abroad.

Update: We have an exciting development to report! Invasive experiments on chimpanzees and other great apes are closer to being history in the United States now that the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has voted to advance the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act to the full Senate. 

We want to thank everyone who responded to PETA's call to urge senators on the committee to pass the bill. Now let's make sure that this lifesaving measure becomes law—please contact your U.S. legislators and encourage them to support the great-ape bill when it comes up for a vote!

Originally published April 23, 2012:

In advance of the April 24 U.S. Senate hearing on the historic Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act (GAPCSA), PETA sent members of Congress a print of a painting along with a photo of and a letter about the artist—a chimpanzee named Jamie, who was rescued from a laboratory.

Photo: Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

From Experiments to Expressionism

Jamie, now 34 years old, spent more than 20 years alone in a cage in the windowless basement of a Pennsylvania laboratory, where she was used in hepatitis experiments. In 2008, she—along with six other chimpanzees from the same laboratory—was rescued with PETA's help by Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest. Jamie now spends her days relaxing, playing outdoors with her friends, and expressing herself through art, including pen drawings and finger paintings. You can watch her creativity in action here.

GAPCSA would ban invasive experiments on chimpanzees, retire more than 600 federally owned chimpanzees to sanctuaries, and save taxpayers millions of dollars a year. PETA hopes Jamie's artwork and photo will help legislators put a face to this lifesaving bill at a critical moment.

How You Can Help Great Apes Like Jamie

Please contact your U.S. representative and senators and urge them to cosponsor and support the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act.

John Paul Mitchell Systems is showing consumers once again why it's a leader in cruelty-free compassion. The hair-care and salon giant has decided to pull entirely out of the Chinese market rather than having its products tested on animals. Paul Mitchell, whose products have never been tested on animals anywhere in the world and who had not yet been required to do so in China, is the first cruelty-free company to stop selling in that country in order to prevent cruel animal tests.  For this bold move, PETA, which has been in communication with the company for months, is presenting Paul Mitchell with its Courage in Commerce Award.

© Chris Garcia

Mary Kay, Avon, and Estée Lauder recently sold out animals when they began paying for animal testing in order to market their products in China and were thus promptly removed from PETA's cruelty-free list. But compassionate companies such as Paul Mitchell and Urban Decay are proving that they'd rather have clear consciences than a few extra yuan in their wallets.

After PETA funded a group of scientists to travel to China and offer their advice on replacing animal experiments with superior non-animal methods, the country is poised to approve its first non-animal cosmetics test. 

In the meantime, please use PETA's Caring Consumer database and support only companies that refuse to pay for any animal tests—no matter where in the world they are conducted.

Following PETA's and PETA U.K.'s work in the E.U. to hasten the replacement of an animal test that had been used for decades in deadly shellfish toxicity detection, PETA has now helped make it possible for an alternative testing method developed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be used in the U.S. by helping to fund a critical license.

Antagain|iStockphoto.com

For decades, state fisheries throughout the U.S. have used a painful and deadly test on mice to determine whether shellfish caught for human consumption contain a lethal concentration of toxins. In these tests, a sample of shellfish is processed in a blender, and this slurry is injected into the abdomens of mice, causing them to have seizures, become paralyzed, and die painfully from suffocation.

After years of communicating with the FDA, PETA recently learned of a new, much more humane method for detecting these deadly toxins that was developed by an FDA scientist and uses tissue from one animal instead of more than 1,000 live animals. Not only does the new test have the potential to save tens of thousands of animals a year, it is also scientifically superior and far less expensive.

In addition to helping fund the licensing of the new method, PETA has also begun to fund yet another method that will further refine the new test. Our scientists are also contacting all U.S. fisheries to urge them to implement this scientifically superior and more efficient method. PETA's hard work will allow the U.S. to use 21st century testing methods and eliminate the use of live mice for shellfish monitoring—much as PETA and our affiliates accomplished in the E.U.

PETA and its affiliates have donated more than $1 million to the development of non-animal test methods. 

Of course, to eliminate animal suffering completely, we recommend that people not consume shellfish but rather partake of a healthy plant-based diet.

Here is some of the hideous handiwork of April's Vivisector of the Month, Janet Neisewander of Arizona State University, who has been conducting wasteful and cruel addiction experiments on animals since 1984.

Using nearly $3 million in taxpayer money, Neisewander gets rats hooked on drugs like morphine, cocaine, and nicotine—sometimes after obliterating parts of the rats' brains with acid.

In these pictures, the rats have nicotine pumped directly into their jugular veins through tubes implanted in their heads. Later, they'll be killed and decapitated and have their brains removed.

How You Can Help Animals Killed in Nicotine Experiments

Thanks to studies in humans, we already know that smoking cigarettes can cause disease in nearly every organ of the human body. Please tell the National Institutes of Health to stop funding nicotine experiments on animals and use tax money for prevention, education, and human-based research instead.

After two decades of touting their "no animal testing" policies, Avon, Estée Lauder, and Mary Kay have quietly resumed paying for cruel tests on animals—without letting consumers know about this stunning about-face. After confirming with each company that chemicals are being dripped into rabbits' eyes and that substances are being rubbed onto animals' skin because of requirements of the Chinese government in order to market products in that country, PETA has downgraded the companies to our "do test" list. 

All three companies were among the first large international cosmetics manufacturers to ban all tests on animals after being targeted by PETA. Avon was the first in 1989, following PETA's "Avon Killing" campaign, a play on the company's then-slogan "Avon Calling." Mary Kay came next, after being publicly lampooned by cartoonist Berkeley Breathed in a series called The Night of the Mary Kay Commandos in his hilarious Bloom County comic strip. Estée Lauder soon followed suit.

For each test required by the Chinese government, superior non-animal methods are available. Mary Kay had taken steps to work with Chinese officials on the acceptance of these tests, but Avon and Estée Lauder seem to have agreed to the tests without objection. PETA has jump-started the effort for non-animal test validation by awarding a grant to the Institute for In Vitro Sciences, which is working with scientists and regulatory bodies to replace animal tests in China.  

Please let Avon, Estée Lauder, and Mary Kay know that you won't buy their products until they are 100 percent cruelty-free once again. Fortunately for animals, you can still choose from more than 1,000 companies in PETA's online searchable database of cosmetics and personal-care companies that don't harm animals at home or abroad.

Former "pussycat" Kimberly Wyatt instinctively knows that torturing rabbits, mice, and other animals for makeup is wrong. In her new ad for PETA U.K., Kimberly, who has her own line of cruelty-free cosmetics, exposes the painful and often deadly effects that chemical tests have on animals.

Hair: Klare Wilkinson|Make-up: Lan Nguyen|Studio: ShoreditchStudios.com|© karlgrant.com

Testing cosmetics on animals has been banned within the European Union (E.U.) since 2009. The E.U. also approved a ban on the sale of cosmetics containing ingredients that were tested on animals elsewhere, effective in 2013. But under pressure from some cosmetics companies, the E.U. is considering delaying that ban. Kimberly is hopeful that her ad will encourage the E.U. to uphold the original deadline.

She's got a lot of support: After PETA U.K., PETA Germany, and PETA Netherlands sent out action alerts to their members, the European Commission (the E.U.'s executive branch) received more than 20,000 e-mails urging it not to delay the ban. And when PETA U.S. sent out a similar action alert, we quickly collected and delivered more than 50,000 letters from people in the U.S. and other countries imploring the European Commission to keep the deadline and keep animals safe.

On this side of the pond, we aren't fortunate enough to have such a ban yet, but we can implement one in our homes by buying only cruelty-free products.