China aiming for cruelty-free

China has implemented legislation banning animal testing for ordinary cosmetics produced and sold inside the country. The news was welcomed by campaigners, who have been working on the issue for two years – eg, the Be Cruelty-Free campaign run by the Humane Society International’s (HSI) Beijing team and its Chinese animal group partners, and Cruelty Free International’s China Task Force.

“This is an important first step for China in moving away from cruel and unreliable animal testing for cosmetics,” said Peter Li, PhD, HSI’s China Policy Adviser. “Our Be Cruelty-Free campaign has worked hard to achieve this milestone, but we know much work remains before we eliminate all cosmetics animal testing in China, so we are not resting on our laurels.”

Hilary Jones, Ethics Director for UK based cosmetics firm Lush, added: “Lush is very pleased to see the recent changes that the Chinese authorities have made to the testing requirements for domestic produced products. We hope this is a first step towards legislation that fully eliminates animals from testing requirements.

“Lush and other cruelty-free companies are still unable to trade in China currently, as this legislation does not allow for fully non-animal tested cosmetics to come to market. We look forward to further progressive legislation in this area which... would allow Chinese cosmetics companies to trade into Europe and allow us to operate cruelty free in China.”