Like many people, Lush is of the opinion that animal testing is cruel, inhumane and in this day and age unnecessary.
Animal testing has been forgotten about by the media to a certain extent and when something goes from the public eye it is very easy to forget about it and presume it's not happening anymore.
What Lush did on the 24th of April 2012, was to bring animal testing back into the public eye in the most dramatic way possible.
A young woman was dragged through the streets of London to the flagship Regent Street store where she was placed in the window on a bench, like a laboratory animal, and experimented on in the full view of horrified shoppers. She had drops put into her eyes, was injected, force-fed with her mouth held open by separators and had some of her hair shaved off, all to provide a visual representation of what laboratory animals go through every day. This was all live streamed online and went on for over ten hours.
Outside of the store, our staff ensured that people knew why it was happening, what it represented and that any young children were not traumatised. The audience were encouraged to sign the cosmetics testing directive petition to ban the sale of all animal tested products in the EU.
The petition was available in all Lush shops and online at the Lush website and all Lush stores were encouraged to hold their own demonstrations as the 24th of April is World Animals in laboratories day.
The final part of the cosmetics testing directive banning the sale and marketing of all animal tested cosmetics in the EU was finally made law on the 11th of July 2013.
But the implementation of the cosmetics testing directive wasn’t the end. Worldwide animals are still being abused in cruel and unnecessary tests. While animal testing still exists Lush will continue to fight against it.
