Pure & Basic is against animal testing of cosmetic products and ingredients. We do not test our products or ingredients on animals. Nor, do we commission others to do so. We never have and never will. We consider such tests to be morally and scientifically indefensible. We try to prevent personal care ingredient suppliers from animal testing. We also support and use alternative tests, and, most importantly, inform the public. Around the world, tens of thousands of animals are used to test personal care products and ingredients. Many of these tests are undertaken to comply with Health and Safety and Environmental regulations. The cosmetic industry uses four basic tests on animals. The first is for eye irritations, the Draize test, in which shampoos and cosmetics are put into rabbits' eyes which are fastened open. The chemicals cause blistering, swelling and blindness. The pain often becomes so intense that the rabbit sometimes breaks its back trying to get away from it. The second test is the skin irritation test in which the test animal has an area of its back stripped of fur and the test product repeatedly rubbed into the bare skin causing rash, pain and swelling. The third test is the LD/50 test (lethal dose - 50% dies). In this test, cosmetics are force fed to test animals to determine the amount necessary to cause 50% of them to die in severe agony from such things as organ blockage, toxic reaction and convulsions. Fourth is the inhalation test. In this test, animals are sprayed repeatedly in the face for a 2 1/2 hour period, then killed and their tissues examined. There are plenty of existing personal care ingredients as well as others such as some plants and foods that do not need animal testing. We also believe imposing a ban will lead to more rapid progress in developing alternative tests. This is because most personal care companies develop products using new ingredients that are animal tested. A test ban would stop the use of these ingredients until alternative tests are developed and validated. As a result, more effort and resources will go into developing tests that don't require the use of animals. At Pure & Basic customer safety is also very important to us. In developing products we use ingredients with a history of safe human use and natural ingredients like green tea. Our product ingredients are subject to non-animal tests such as skintex or eyetex, and are developed using controlled testing on carefully monitored groups of human volunteers. We also encourage ingredient suppliers to stop animal testing. We will not purchase any ingredient that they have tested or retested on animals for cosmetic purposes. If we find a supplier who uses animal testing, we stop buying the ingredient from them and look for an alternative source. If no source can be found, and we cannot reformulate the product, we will stop making it.