The Humane Cosmetics Act H.R. 4148 was introduced to the House of Representatives on March 5, 2014, in a previous session of Congress by Rep. James Moran, Jr., (D-VA), now retired. It was referred to the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade on March 7, 2014, where it languished. The purpose of the bill was to phase out cosmetic animal testing and the sale of cosmetics tested on animals.

The Humane Cosmetics Act H.R. 2858 was reintroduced to the House of Representatives on June 23, 2015, with bi-partisan support from Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA), Rep. Martha McSally (R-AZ), Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-CA), and Rep. Joe Heck (R-NV) to end the inhumane and unnecessary use of animals in cosmetics testing. The bill was referred to the Subcommittee on Energy, Commerce, and Health on June 26, 2015.

The Humane Cosmetics Act of 2015 would prohibit testing cosmetics on animals, effective on the date that is one year after enactment of this act. No cosmetic may be sold or transported if the final product or any component was developed or manufactured using animal testing after such date, effective three years after enactment of this act.

For more information about this proposed legislation, visit www.congress.gov.

The New England Anti- Vivisection Society (NEAVS) at www.neavs.org reports that rabbits are frequent victims of animal experimenters because they are mild-tempered and easy to handle, confine, and breed – more than 170,000 of them are abused in U.S. laboratories every year. If passed, this bill would save rabbits and other rodents from languishing in cages and having caustic chemicals applied to their eyes and skin.

According to NEAVS, “Animal experiments have caused immense suffering and wasted billions of dollars and decades of time that could have been spent finding the preventions, treatments, and cures humans need. Traditional toxicity tests performed on animals have resulted in the deaths of millions of animals each year, while mostly producing data that is inaccurate or irrelevant to humans. To be valid, science must be predictive, and to be considered reliable, it must be consistently so. Animal data is neither. Animals that are infected in the lab do not mimic human disease; physiology differs among species and animal ‘models’ are incapable of elucidating the complex nature of disease in humans.”

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) at www.humanesociety.org, points out that artificial human skin, such as “EpiSkin™, EpiDerm™ and SkinEthic™, can save thousands of rabbits each year from painful skin corrosion and irritation tests.

According to the HSUS, “Nearly 50 different alternative methods and testing strategies have been developed, validated and/or accepted by international regulatory authorities. The Bovine Corneal Opacity and Permeability Test and Isolated Chicken Eye Test use eyes from animals slaughtered for the meat industry instead of live rabbits to detect chemicals and products that are severely irritating to the eyes. Using blood from human volunteers to test for the presence of fever-causing contaminants in intravenous medicines can save hundreds of thousands of rabbits each year from traditional ‘pyrogen’ tests. The Reduced Local Lymph Node Assay for skin allergy testing makes it possible to reduce animal use by up to 75 percent compared with traditional guinea pig and mouse tests. Once an alternative test has been developed by a scientist, it must be scientifically ‘validated,’ or evaluated in multiple laboratories to see if its results reliably predict outcomes in people. Validation is sometimes a frustratingly slow process, and the United States has unfortunately proved to be far slower at validating alternatives than the European Union.”

The New England Anti- Vivisection Society reports that EpiSkin™ and EpiDerm™ have both been approved as complete replacements for animal tests by the European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods (ECVAM).

NEAVS confirms that “the notorious Draize skin irritation test in rabbits can only predict human skin reactions 60 percent of the time, but using reconstituted human skin is up to 86 percent accurate. Statistics show that alternatives are better because crude skin allergy tests in guinea pigs only predict human reactions 72 percent of the time, but a combination of chemistry and cell-based alternative methods has been shown to accurately predict human reactions 90 percent of the time. The standard test on pregnant rats to find out if chemicals or drugs may harm the developing baby can only detect 60 percent of dangerous substances, but a cell-based alternative has 100 percent accuracy at detecting very toxic chemicals.”

Alternatives to animal testing, such as cell cultures, human tissues, computer models, and volunteer studies. are proving to be more reliable, less expensive, and less time-consuming. Only support companies and charities that do not fund or conduct cruel experiments on animals. Look for the leaping bunny logo on the packaging of the cruelty-free cosmetic or household cleaning products. Please call your legislators and ask them to support the Humane Cosmetics Act H.R. 2858 of 2015.

— Val Philbrick works in the production department of the Journal Tribune as a pre-press person. She is a member of PETA and the Humane Society of the United States.