Tuesday, 30 September 2014

Drugstore products not tested on animals



Hello, So today i said i would write this blog to help people decide on what to buy when heading in for some makeup or some beauty essentials.

I will tell you first off what I use from top to toe :)


Shampoo and Conditioner
Avalon Organics Ylang Ylang Shine €8.00
YLANG YLANG Shine Shampoo - product imageBuy This: http://avalonorganics.com/ylang-ylang-shine-shampoo













Face Wash
Clarnis Pure Melt Cleansing Gel - €22.00 

Clarins Cleansing Care Pure Melt Cleansing Gel All Skin Types 125mlBuy This: http://www.allbeauty.com/skincare/10107-clarins-cleansing-care-pure-melt-cleansing-gel-all-skin-types-125ml


 Body Lotion:
 The Body Shop Honey Mania €18.00

Click for enlarged view Buy This http://www.thebodyshop.co.uk/bath-body-care/body-butter/honeymania-body-butter.aspx


Makeup: Anything for E.LF

 Buy This: http://eyeslipsface.co.uk/


So Yes, there are some of the products I use: All are not tested on animals or against animal testing

Here is a list of what you can buy in your local drugstore thats not tested on animals, now I live in Ireland so I am listing brands that are carried in Ireland in this first list and after that I will list more from outside ireland


  • Burts Bees
  • Wet N Wild
  • Autogragh (carried my Marks & Spencer)
  • Dr Hauschka (also can be find in M&S)
  • Body Shop Make up
  • Barry M
  • GOSH
  • Nails Inc
  • Superdrug
  • Lia Earle(Found in Boots)
  • Urban Decay
  • Dermatologia 

Beauty Brands Around The World



  • 100% Pure
  • Afrumos
  • Afterglow Cosmetics 
  • Alex and Ani 
  • Alima Pure 
  • Arbonne
  • Aromi
  • Aubrey Organics, Inc. 
  • Avalon Organics 
  • Batty's Bath 
  • Beauté Minéral
  • Beauty Without 
  • Bellapierre
  • BH Cosmetics 
  • Bite Beauty 
  • Biogime Skin Care
  • Bloom Naturals
  • B True Beauty
  • CAILYN Cosmetics
  • Cate McNabb Cosmetics 
  • Christine Valmy, Inc.
  • Coastal Classic Creations 
  • Concrete Minerals 
  • Core Cosmetic
  • Darla Makeup
  • DermaQuest Skin Therapy 
  • DeVita Natural Skin Care Systems
  • Earth's Beauty 
  • EcoGlo Minerals 
  • Elate Clean Cosmetics
  • Elixery 
  • Everyday Minerals 
  • FACE atelier 
  • FACEFACTS 
  • Fevour Cosmetics
  • FíOR Mineral Cosmetics
  • Fitglow Beauty
  • Forsythe Cosmetic Group
  • Gabriel Cosmetics 
  • Gourmet Body Treats
  • Green Girl Basics 
  • ILIA
  • Jing Ai Organic and Natural Cosmetics 
  • Joe Blasco Cosmetics
  • Juice Beauty 
  • Kiss My Face
  • Lime Crime
  • LoriannZ 
  • Mineral Fusion 
  • Modern Minerals
  • My Lip Stuff 
  • Nabelle Company 
  • Nature Clean 
  • Neal's Yard Remedies 
  • NYR Organics
  • Ofra Cosmetics
  • ONLY YOURx Skin Care
  • Outside/In Cosmetics 
  • Paula's Choice 
  • Plain Jane Beauty 
  • Polish Cosmetics
  • Pure Anada Natural 
  • Red Barn Herb Farms
  • Reliq Minerals
  • Renee Rouleau Skin Care
  • Sally B's Skin Yummies
  • Savon Du Bois 
  • Shear Miracle Organics
  • Sombra Cosmetics, Inc.
  • Suki 
  • Tata Harper 
  • The All Natural Face
  • The Body Shop 
  • Truth 
  • Urban Decay 
  • Vapour Organic Beauty 
  • Warm Earth Cosmetics
  • Zia Natural Skincare 
  • Zosimos Botanicals 
  • ZuZu Luxe 















Thursday, 25 September 2014

Things that are made from a pig







So guys, I know topic can be a bit sensitive but I was watching my fave tv show ever QI and they were chatting about what things in everyday life are made from pigs and i found it horrific and wants to educate people on what they are using. 



 It is not only sweets that contain pork gelatine. In some beers, wines and fruit juices, pig gelatine is used to remove the cloudiness from the drink. It works as a clarifying agent by reacting with the tannins in the liquid and absorbing the cloudiness. 

Some ice creams, whipped creams, yoghurts and certain butters also contain gelatine, as do certain pet foods. More surprisingly, a number of medicines also contain pig gelatine  -  everything from painkillers to multivitamins. 

Hygiene and beauty products are also made of pig. Fatty acids extracted from the bone fat of pigs are used in shampoos and conditioners to give them their shiny, pearl-like appearance. These acids can also be found in a number of body lotions, foundations and anti-wrinkle creams. Glycerine made from pork fat is also an ingredient in many types of toothpaste. 

Christein, from Holland, found that while some companies were reluctant to cooperate in her quest, others claimed that they didn't even realise their products contained elements taken from a pig because of the middle men involved in the complex distribution process. 
The confusion is not helped by the fact that it is not clear on products' ingredient labels where they originally came from. 

According to the Food Standards Authority, there is no legal obligation for manufacturers to specify whether the gelatine they use is from a pig or another animal. When it is specified, it is often confusingly referred to as Suilline gelatine. 

According to Richard Lutwyche  -  a British pig farmer with more than 60 years experience, chair of the Traditional Breeds Meat Marketing Company and a member of the British Pig Association  -  the reasons for much of this confusion is due to the industrial-scale of much pig farming. 
'In the UK, big commercial farms send their pigs to large abattoirs. The abattoir will find different markets for all the by-products,' he says. 'Everything they can't sell they have to incinerate, so it's in their best interest to sell as much as they can. 

'There's an old expression that says: when it comes to pig, you can use everything but the squeal. Over the past 100 years those uses have expanded rapidly.' 

Some of the surprising products that can include pig material include photographic film, which uses collagen from pig bones; shoes that use bone glue from pigs to improve the quality of the leather; and certain paints that use bone fat to enhance their glossy properties. 

Some makers of cigarettes use haemoglobin from pig's blood in their filters. Apparently this element works as a sort of 'artificial lung' in the cigarette so, they claim, 'harmful reactions take place before the chemicals reach the user'. 
And the next time you buy a loaf of bread you would be well advised to read the packaging. Some manufacturers use an ingredient called L-cysteine, which is a protein made from pig or other animal hair and which is used to soften the dough. 

A product like Tesco's Plain Tortilla Wraps includes this ingredient. The strangest use for a pig by-product that Christein found was in bullets and explosives. Pig bone gelatine was used to help transport the gunpowder or cordite into the bullet. It is difficult not to be impressed by the sheer versatility of this animal and its parts. 
Virtually nothing in a pig goes to waste. 



Wednesday, 3 September 2014

Why test on animals?

Many items purchased and used by us everyday, cleansers, cosmetics, drugs, are nearly always subjected to government regulations requiring that they be “safe” for us humans to use in everyday life. Businesses  are responsible for using toxicity animal tests on these types of products, including their active ingredients, before they enter the shops. The test results are then submitted to regulatory agencies that determine whether the data are sufficient for labeling and marketing the product. The toxicity testing for many types of products still involves testing on animals. 



Why the Bunnies? 



Products have to be safe for us humans to use either to put inside use aka tablets etc. Or put on our skin or clean our house with. They are tested so it can be safe and meet requirements to find out if it will harm us or be fatal to anyone who uses it. Even cosmetics with is not regulated commonly test on animals for safety. Many of these tests are toxicity tests done on either mice,rats or bunnies. Some of these tests required by FDA or EPA also use dogs,primates and other animals.  A toxicity test is required to find out the potential risks of each chemical. Tests will differ depending on the product type.

The most common test is the Draize rabbit eye test, intended to predict whether that product will cause injury to the human eye. The test involes placing an amount of product into the eyes of the rabbit up to 6 rabbits at a time and keeping a record over a course of 21 days. The nature of this is nothing but cruel with the animal in a lot of pain. This test has been proved to have poor results and not always the same result that a human would have.


Progress for non-animal testing is on going, but is very slow, disorganized and subject to backlash.

The Draize test for skin irritancy, which was first introduced in 1944, has been used to measure the response produced when a test is applied to the shaved skin of a group of animals, and can cause intense pain, burning and itching. (Skin is abraded by firmly pressing adhesive tape onto the animal’s body and quickly stripping it off.  The process is repeated until several layers of skin have been removed.)



Another traditional animal  test is called the  LD50 test, which stands for the lethal dose of a given test substance in 50% of the test’s animal population. The test, is done on mainly on mice and rats, is commonly used to for the human health of acute oral systemic toxicity where animal subjects are force-fed oral doses of the chemical being tested. This oral systemic test is used as a general indicator of the overall relative toxicity of a substance. Many scientists claim that the oral LD50 test has little relevance to evaluating the human safety of a substance, and some places  and international organizations have withdrawn their requirement for this type of test data. Progress toward replacing the LD50 test with alternative non-animal methods has been ongoing, but the test involves toxicity to the whole organism, and is therefore biologically complex.


Subchronic toxicity tests are used to determine toxicity from repeated exposure to a chemical over a period of several weeks to several months.  These tests usually last less than 10% of the test subjects’ natural life span.  Subchronic toxicity tests are used to measure the toxicity in chemicals, food additives, and even common spices such as paprika.  Hydroquinone, a chemical commonly used in skin lightening, age spot, and blemish creams, was also tested using these tests.

Chronic toxicity tests assess risks of long-term exposure - often at low levels for a substantial portion of the test subjects’ life - such as the potential to cause cancer, birth defects, and developmental abnormalities. They may also explore the body's absorption, distribution, metabolism, storage, and excretion of new chemicals and products, and/or monitor the long-term effect of a chemical on the brain, DNA, and nervous system. Lifetime animal-feeding studies, such as those conducted over the two-year lifetime of a rat or the 18-month lifetime of a mouse, are examples of chronic-toxicity tests.

Ref : www.mspca.org

Alternatives Development

In response to worldwide interest in reducing animal use in product safety testing, a growing number of alternative tests have been developed that replace, reduce, or refine animal tests .
In vitro tests (involving cell and tissue cultures grown "in glass" in the laboratory) are among the alternatives showing the most promise in product testing. They are faster, cheaper, and often more reliable than animal tests. Some completely replace animals while others reduce their numbers.  Additionally, tests that are in silico (computer-based) have also reduced the numbers of animals used.  While these methods often eliminate the need for animals in the early stages of research, animals are often needed in later stages of product development.  Still other alternatives, called refinements, make tests less painful or stressful for the animals involved.

Tuesday, 2 September 2014

Animal testing on Big Brands



So recently I have done some research in to the products that I have been using either on my face or body.

I noticed that nearly all if not all of the products were tested on animals. Which really shocked me, I never realized the lengths companies went to with there products, this article is not to scare you or make you change your mind, its just so you can have some knowledge of what id out there and what your product was doing before your put it on your face,hair or body. 

This is just going to be a list and tiny example of what these companies do :) Dont be scared, just have a nose! 

Which companies and brands still allow testing on animals?


1.Andrew Collinge

  1. Andrew Collinge
  2. Anna Sui 
  3. Aramis
  4. Aveeno
  5. Band-Aid
  6. Bobbi Brown
  7. Bonjela
  8. Braun
  9. Caharel
  10. Cashmere Bouquet
  11. Chapstick
  12. Clairol
  13. Clean and Clear
  14. Clearasil
  15. Clinicare
  16. Clinique
  17. Colgate
  18. Crest
  19. Decore
  20. Disprin
  21. Dolce and Gabbana
  22. Donna Karan
  23. Dove
  24. Durex
  25. Elizabeth Arden
  26. Eulactol
  27. Garnier
  28. Gillette
  29. Gucci 
  30. Head and Shoulders
  31. Hugo Boss
  32. Herbel Essences
  33. Impulse
  34. Johnson and Johnson
  35. Kerastase
  36. Kiehls
  37. Lacoste
  38. Lancome
  39. Lemsip
  40. Listerine
  41. Lux
  42. Lynx
  43. MAC
  44. Max Factor
  45. Maybelline
  46. Michael Kors
  47. Missoni
  48. Mum
  49. Nair
  50. Neutrogena
  51. Nice N Easy
  52. Nurofen
  53. Olay
  54. Old Spice
  55. Optex
  56. Oral B
  57. Palmolive
  58. Pantene
  59. Pearl Drops
  60. Pears
  61. Pert
  62. Plax
  63. Ponds
  64. PPS
  65. Radox
  66. Ralph Lauren
  67. Reacg
  68. Redkeen
  69. Rexona
  70. Revlon
  71. Rogaine
  72. Sanex
  73. Savlon
  74. Scholl
  75. Sensodyne
  76. Simple
  77. St Ives
  78. Strepsils
  79. Tampax
  80. Tom Ford
  81. Tony and Guy
  82. Tommy Hilfiger
  83. TREsemme
  84. Vaseline
  85. Veet
  86. Venus
  87. Vicks
  88. V05
  89. Viktor and Rolf
  90. Waxeeze
  91. Wella
  92. Zest
beauty brands that do not test on animals


This blog is hear to just make you aware, please keep an eye out for a blog tomorrow more about animal testing and more on skin care,hair and household in the coming weeks