Author: Annonymous
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Every year, millions of animals suffer and die in painful tests to determine the safety of cosmetics. Substances such as eye shadow and soap are tested on rabbits, rats, guinea pigs, dogs, and other animals, despite the fact that the test results don't help prevent or treat human illness or injury. Cosmetics are not required to be tested on animals and since non-animal alternatives exist, it's hard to understand why some companies still continue to conduct these tests. Cosmetic companies kill millions of animals every year to try to make a profit. According to the companies that perform these tests, they are done to establish the safety of a product and the ingredients. However, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) which regulates cosmetic products, does not require animal testing. Some of the tests used on animals are eye irritancy tests, acute toxicity tests, and skin irritancy tests. In eye irritancy tests, a liquid, flake, granule, or powdered substance is dropped into the eyes of a group of albino rabbits. The animals are often immobilized in stocks from which only their heads protrude. They usually receive no anesthesia during the tests. After placing the substance into the rabbits eyes, lab technicians record the damage to the eye tissue at specific intervals over an average period of 72 hours. The tests sometimes last seven to eighteen days. Reactions to the substances include swollen eyelids, ulceration, bleeding, swollen irises massive deterioration, and blindness. During the tests, rabbits eyelids are usually held open with clips, because of this, many animals try to break their necks as they try to escape. Acute toxicity tests, commonly called lethal dose or poisoning tests, determine the amount of a substance that will kill a percentage, even up to one-hundred percent, of a group of test animals. In these tests, a substance is forced by tube into the animals stomach