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Compassionate Shopping
Household products
A trip to your local store easily confirms the overwhelming number of household products on the market. It's easy to feel left in a spin over which ones are genuinely cruelty free, which won't introduce toxins into our homes, and which don't disappear down the drain only to pollute the environment.
Coupled to this, recent EU legislation requires re-testing of substances found in some household products. These substances include OBA’s (Optical Brightening Agents) which give the illusion of "whiter than white" in laundry products, and enzymes found in biological washing powders and colour care products.
HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTS TESTING... SOME HOME TRUTHS
- Over 17 million washes are done each day in the UK, and the laundry market alone is worth £1.2 billion! To secure their share of this market some companies continue to develop products that are tested on animals.
- The key players in the industry Proctor & Gamble, S.C.Johnson, Reckitt Benckiser and Unilever, continue to introduce ingredients that necessitate animal testing. In 2002, Proctor & Gamble invested 4% of sales in research and development, amounting to $1.5 billion.
- Rabbits, guinea pigs, mice, rats and fish are used to test acute toxicity, chronic systemic toxicity, Skin irritation, Eye irritation (Draize test), Sensitisation, Mutagenicity, Carcinogenicity, Reprotoxicity, Teratology. Owing to the very nature of household cleaning products, these tests are often even more intrusive and harmful to the animals involved.
- Despite a voluntary ban on animal testing of cosmetics and their ingredients being adopted in 1997 and 1998 respectively, there is no ban on the testing of household products on animals in the UK, and in 2002, 1043 animals were used then euthenased in the UK to test the safety and efficacy of household products.
- Though the government has said it is exploring the feasibility of a ban on testing finished household products on animals, this is still to materialise. Thus the Animal Procedures Committee is considering a ban, and will advise on this, as part of its planned work on the cost/benefit assessment. See also the Boyd Group report on Household Products.
EUROPEAN LEGISLATION
As well as legislation that requires the testing of new substances, under the "EU Directive on Dangerous Preparations" (Dangerous Substances Directive), other legislation which necessitate animal testing include:
- EU “Biocidal Products Directive” 98/8/EC – testing of finished household products which have biocidal properties, e.g. disinfectants, preservatives.
- Washing powders are subject to tests required by EU legislation, owing to the inclusion of Optical Brightening Agents, Non- Biological and Biological washing powders.
- Other testing programmes involve the testing of chemicals that are produced in high volumes, High Production Volume (HPV).
HOW YOU CAN HELP
- Buy only cruelty free —
Shopping for cruelty free needn’t be difficult, once you know which companies do have an ethically sound approach to animal testing, and which don’t. The Co-op, Homecare, Bio-D and a whole host of other compassionate companies listed in the Compassionate Shopping Guide, each have fixed cut off date policies and can be used with a clean conscience.
- Write to your MP More...
- Write to your local press More...
Uncaged Campaigns have an ongoing campaign to boycott Proctor and Gamble.
If you use a cleaning product that’s cruelty free and does everything it says on the label and more, then why not send a review of the product, for our Love Cruelty Free product review page? You can then encourage others to shop cruelty free.
Or why not try making your own homemade cleaning solutions:
Home-made recipe - Sink cleanerIngredients Mix bicarbonate of soda, white distilled vinegar, 2 drops lemon essential oil, 1 drop tea tree essential oil and 2 drops lavender essential oil. Use with a scouring sponge and rinse. See also our Handbook of Homemade Recipes. |
