According to the NY Times, China’s FDA will stop mandating animal tests on some cosmetics, including shampoos and certain skin-care products, if the manufacturers can assess risk using other methods, such as evaluating  existing data on the ingredients.  More than 50 activists celebrated in the streets in the city of Dalian in a rally organized by the Humane Society International, one of the NGOs behind the Be Cruelty-Free campaign in China. As many as 300,000 rabbits, guinea pigs, mice and other animals are used to test cosmetics in China every year.

Animals used in experiments are among the most tortured on the planet. Just imagine spending your entire life in a cage and being pinned down and having chemicals forced down your throat or injected into your eyes. In the U.S., the Humane Cosmetics Act would prohibit animal testing for cosmetics manufactured or sold in the country. Please ask your U.S. Representative to cosponsor this bill.

A letter from PETA has prompted tennis star Andy Murray from removing references to hunting from his hotel’s website.  Here’s an excerpt: “The idea of hunting cats and dogs, such as your beloved Maggie May and Rusty, would rightly make most of us sick, and yet the animals listed on the Cromlix website have exactly the same capacity to feel pain and suffer.”

Andy Murray’s Hotel Cromlix in Scotland

Hunting is the only “sport” in which only one team knows that it’s playing.  One could argue that eating meat from free roaming animals who are hunted is more humane than eating factory farmed animals, but I can’t help but think that the majority of people who hunt do so because they enjoy killing.  And, while it’s true that the hunted animals lived freely before being killed, they often leave behind offspring who are too young to take care of themselves.  To the humans, hunting is a recreational activity, but to the the animals who are killed and orphaned, it’s a tragedy.  To learn more about hunting and to see what you can do to stop it, please visit PETA’s hunting page.

Lawmakers in a French National Assembly committee voted to officially change the legal status of animals from “personal property” to “sentient living being.”  The law still must pass the full Assembly and Senate.  The current law states that animals have no more rights than objects.  The 30 Million Friends Foundation collected 700,000 signatures to petition for the change. A recent poll found that 89 percent of the country approves of the change.  Since 2009, the European Union governing body has officially considered animals sentient beings under the Lisbon Treaty, but many national governments have not yet updated their laws.

Foie Gras: Product of Terroir (the land) or Product of Terror?

If animals are reclassified as “sentient living beings,” will their circumstances improve?  Foie gras (fatty liver of ducks or geese), a staple in the French diet, is so cruelly produced that it is described by activists as a “delicacy of despair.”   Is this change merely symbolic (which is better than nothing, I suppose) or will regulations be changed in animal enterprises that will actually require the businesses to treat them as living beings instead of inanimate objects?

The Associated Press reports that “more than 1,000 acrobats, clowns and other circus employees marched through downtown Mexico City on Tuesday to protest a new ban on animals in circuses,” claiming that banning  this “250 year old” tradition will leave many people out of work and will reduce the number of customers who attend the circus.  About 3,000 to 3,500 animals will be affected, including elephants, tigers, camels and hippos.  Domesticated animals are also banned.

Sign reads, “Mexicans want circus with animals” Source: AP

Animals used in circuses, like elephants and big cats, are deprived of the chance to do anything that comes naturally to them and are often beaten into submission in order to perform.  In addition, they are confined to small boxcars on trains for days at a time when traveling between cities. Please join your local animal rights group(s) to protest the circus when it comes to your town.  To learn more about animal cruelty in circuses, please visit PETA’s circus webite, Ringling Beats Animals.  Let’s hope that the ban on wild animals in circuses will open peoples’ eyes to the cruelty of bullfighting, which is prevalent in Mexico.

India has banned animal testing for cosmetics, becoming the first country in Asia to do so. The European Union, Israel, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand already have cosmetic testing bans.

According to Cruelty Free International, many countries in the world, including the U.S., still allow “antiquated, cruel, and unnecessary” animal testing for cosmetics. Animal testing is unnecessary because “non-animal tests are quicker, cheaper and more reliable.” Furthermore, the use animal tests to determine product safety has been “increasingly called into question because transferring the results of animal tests to humans has proven to be problematic and misleading in many cases.” To find out how you can help, please visit Cruelty Free International, “the only global organizations working solely to end animal testing for cosmetics and consumer products.”