They don’t just use animals to test cosmetics, but they abuse them for many other studies and tests. When they use the animals to study healing processes, they will kill them by either neck-breaking, decapitation, or other means. In the Draize eye test, that is used for cosmetic companies, they evaluate irritation by testing shampoo and other products with their eyelids held open by intolerable clips for days, taking their ability to blink away the tested products. Many animals suffer pain through all these tests without being under anesthesia for pain relief.
There’s no reason why companies can’t use the safer testing methods that now exist. There are computer models, artificial human skin, or the study of cell cultures in a petri dish that can actually produce more pertinent results than animal testing. In fact, animal tests may lead researchers into not realizing potential cures and treatments. Animals don’t provide as well of test subjects as human beings do. Another surprising con to using animals is that it takes more time and money than alternate methods. Furlong, Professor of Clinical Neuroimaging at Aston University (UK), states that “It’s very hard to create an animal model that even equates closely to what we’re trying to achieve in the human.”
So why use animals to run studies and tests? It may be because they have helped create life-saving cures and treatments, but is it really worth killing and torturing animals when there are alternate safer methods out there?