When you pick up cosmetic and household products at the grocery store, you probably don't spend a lot of time considering what went into producing them. As long as an item's safe for you to use and works like you want it to, what's the big deal? You might want to start thinking about how it was tested, though. Many companies, including those that own huge brand names known across the country, use animal testing to ensure the safety of their products before they're available to consumers. Some of these tests are necessary to show that the products meet the legal standards while others are done voluntarily to confirm that the item is as good as it can be. Whether you think animal testing is cruel in all circumstances or you believe that it's necessary to keep humans safe and healthy, you should at least be aware that these eight products, which are probably somewhere in your home, are tested on animals.
The magic glass cleaner, which cures every ailment according to My Big Fat Greek Wedding, is tested on animals to make sure it is safe for human use, as are many other SC Johnson products like Glade and Pledge. Labs test Windex on the eyes and skin of the animals to see if it is irritating and also test the effects of ingesting the product. While it might make you feel safer having it in the house, it doesn't do much for the peace of mind of animal activists.
Those handy neon notes you have stuck all over your desk don't seem like they're too complicated or full of potentially dangerous chemicals, but their components are still tested on animals. 3M, the company that makes Post-its along with Scotch tape and other consumer products, uses animal testing, some of which is required by law and some that is used to see how safe their products are. On Post-its, for example, the company probably tests the safety of the adhesive used.
When looking for animal-tested products in your house, you probably don't have to reach much farther than your bed-side table. Trojan, the popular brand of condom, is made by Church & Dwight, a global company often blasted for its use of animal testing. While the rubber itself doesn't contain any animal by-products, making it technically OK for vegans to use, the product isn't cruelty-free. And with more than 70% of condoms sold in the U.S. being Trojans, chances are that many Americans are using the product without knowing how it was tested.
Of course we want to know the things we eat are safe to be putting in our bodies, but many groups think this kind of testing could be done with consenting human subjects rather than animals. Mars, the makers of M&Ms, Twix, Snickers, and more, tests its ingredients on rats and mice to see their different effects on the body. One test, for example, looked at what the chocolate ingredients did to the blood vessels of a rat, and involved force-feeding and slicing open the animal's legs. Many of the experiments end with killing the animals to be able to dissect them and really see the results. Not exactly appetizing.
Though Johnson & Johnson has reduced its use of animal testing 65% since 2000, the company is still using animals to meet government testing standards when alternatives won't provide enough data. Johnson & Johnson makes many consumer products that we use every day including baby care items, skin and hair care like Neutrogena and Clean & Clear products, Listerine, and of course, Band-Aids. Considering how often we use these items and how readily we put a Band-Aid on our kids' boo-boos, we really should know more about the tests that are performed before these products hit the shelves.
We rely on Kleenex when we've got the sniffles, but Kleenex's parent company, Kimberly-Clark, relies on animal testing to make sure its products are safe for consumers. Other brands in the Kimberly-Clark family include Cottonelle bath tissues, Scott paper towels, Huggies, and Kotex. While the corporation supports research for non-animal test methods and only uses animal testing when it has to, you should still be aware that these common household products, including the one you just sneezed into, use animals as test subjects.
Of all the products in your house, you would probably think that your pet food would be among the most animal friendly. Not so if you're buying Iams. The pet product company tests its wares on dogs and cats, and while they have ended the horribly invasive procedures they used to perform on the dogs and cats (like cutting muscle off of their bodies), they still use as many as 700 dogs and cats to test the nutrition of their products. They also still perform invasive experiments on animals other than dogs and cats.
Vaseline petroleum jelly and the other lotions and skin products under that name are great for keeping your skin moist and crack-free. But the skin of the lab animals used to test the products isn't so lucky, since it has to suffer all of the harmful effects so the product is safe when it hits the shelf. Unilever, who makes Vaseline, also produces other popular products like Dove soaps, Lipton, Slim-Fast, and Axe. Many of these other items are also tested on animals to check whether they're safe to use on humans. This corporation and many others place the priority on their consumer, which often means that animals end up being harmed. Whether or not that's a bad thing is up to you.
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