The companies Avon, L'Oréal, P&G, Unilever and Lush, which have been engaged in non-animal testing for decades, together with the Humane Society International (HSI), have released a declaration that there will be no animal testing for certain cosmetic ingredients.

The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) had required the manufacturer of sunscreen products, Symrise, to conduct animal experiments for two substances that are used as UV filters in sunscreen products. This was justified with worker protection. In its rejection of the appeal, the Board of Appeal followed ECHA's view, that REACH registrants do not automatically count among the exemptions for animal testing simply because their substance is used as an ingredient exclusively in cosmetics.

Animal rights and animal protection organizations together with numerous manufacturers of cosmetic products strongly disagree. They fear that the ruling blatantly undermines the purpose of the marketing ban of cosmetics tested on animals, which has been in force since March 2013 and effectively allows the registrant and ECHA to ignore the testing and marketing bans of the Cosmetics Regulation (1).

Work safety argument only pretended to fill the database?

In the published statement, the companies now criticized ECHA for undermining the EU's ban on animal testing. In reality, it is assumed that these data requirements are intended to ensure that ECHA can have an administratively complete set of data for hazard classification and labeling, regardless of whether additional data are actually required to ensure worker protection.

(1) https://cosmeticsbusiness.com/news/article_page/Beauty_brands_accuse_ECHA_of_undermining_testing_ban_on_animals_in_public_statement/171395
(2) https://www.eurogroupforanimals.org/news/cosmetics-ingredients-not-automatically-exempted-animal-testing-echas-board-appeal-finds