New Zealand urged to end animal testing for cosmetics
Cruelty Free International presents roadmap to New Zealand to join the global move to end the use of animals to test cosmetics
Global campaigning organization, Cruelty
Free International, is calling on the Government of New
Zealand to sign up to a roadmap to implement a ban on the
use of animals to test cosmetics.
The call comes as Cruelty Free International delivers a ground-breaking scientific report on the alternatives to animal tests to The Hon Nathan Guy, Minister for Primary Industries in New Zealand and 100 additional Governments around the globe.
This report builds on the progress already made with animal testing bans for cosmetics purposes in other countries, including the European Union, India, Israel and China’s recent announcement of acceptance of non-animal testing from June 2014.
The report, ‘Meeting the Global Challenge: A guide to assessing the safety of cosmetics without using animals’ and roadmap are designed to help governments, politicians, regulators and cosmetics manufacturers across the world in switching to alternatives to replace animal testing; ensuring that they use the safest and most modern methods and are not cut off from European and other markets due to dependence on obsolescent technology. It describes the alternative approaches that are available to replace animals and shows how they are more reliable, faster and cheaper than the animal tests they replace.
March 11th marks the one year anniversary of the historic European Union ban on animal tested cosmetics (7th Amendment to Directive 76/768/EEC, now EU Regulation 1223/2009), thereby saving countless animals’ lives from cruel cosmetics tests.
Cruelty Free International, CEO, Michelle Thew, said: ‘On this significant day for our global campaign to end the use of animals in cosmetics testing, we are appealing to the Government of New Zealand to sign up to our roadmap and take steps to bring about a complete end to cruel cosmetics tests on animals.’
Cruelty Free International has placed the issue of animal testing on the agenda of many governments for the very first time as part of a global strategy to tackle product testing.
Members of the public wishing to support the campaign can sign the petition to the New Zealand government at change.org here.
ENDS