Is animal testing for cosmetics banned?

The objection

“Cosmetic testing on animals was banned years ago. This is a solved problem, so why are you still talking about it?”

The answer

Humane Society International, a campaign group, counted 45 countries with a ban by December 2023 [12], so most countries had none. The United States still has no national ban, and even the EU’s ban has a gap, because a separate chemicals law can require animal tests on cosmetic ingredients. Whether medicine needs animal tests is a separate argument.

Where is animal testing for cosmetics banned?

It is banned across the EU, Ireland included, and in the UK, Canada and New Zealand, while Australia restricts it for some ingredients. The EU banned testing finished cosmetics on animals from 11 September 2004 and testing their ingredients from 11 March 2009, and its ban on selling cosmetics tested on animals to meet the Cosmetics Regulation, phased in from 2009, has covered every kind of health test since 11 March 2013 (European Commission) [1][2]. The EU’s Court of Justice ruled in 2016 that this holds wherever the tests were done, if the results are used to show the product is safe for the EU market [3]. The UK banned animal testing for the consumer safety of cosmetics and their ingredients in 1998 [4].

Canada banned testing cosmetics on animals, and selling cosmetics that rely on animal-test data to establish their safety, from 22 December 2023 (Health Canada) [7]. Its law exempts any cosmetic sold in Canada before that date, whatever data it relies on, along with data from tests done before then [8]. It also allows data from tests a substance needed to meet non-cosmetic rules when it is sold in products that aren’t cosmetics, data the Government of Canada has published, and public data from tests that the cosmetic’s maker, importer or seller didn’t sponsor [8].

New Zealand banned using animals to develop, make or test a cosmetic, or an ingredient intended only for cosmetics, in 2015 [13]. The section that carries the ban applies to the use of animals and says nothing about selling cosmetics tested on animals elsewhere [13]. Australia’s ban, in sections 103 and 168 of the Industrial Chemicals Act 2019, is limited to chemicals introduced solely for use in cosmetics. For those, data from animal tests done since 1 July 2020 can’t be used to work out their category under the Act or in applications to bring them in, in circumstances its rules set [9].

Is animal testing for cosmetics banned in the US?

The US has no national ban. The FDA says US law “does not specifically require the use of animals in testing cosmetics for safety”, but that manufacturers, who must show their products are safe, may use animal tests to do so [10]. Twelve states had their own laws by 2025, on the count of the campaign group Cruelty Free International, though Paul Locke of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health told Newsweek that many carry significant exceptions [11]. The Humane Cosmetics Act, which would ban the testing nationally, was introduced in Congress in February 2025 and sent to a House committee [11].

How are cosmetic ingredients still tested on animals in Europe?

They are tested under chemicals law, which the cosmetics ban doesn’t reach. The ban covers tests done “in order to meet the requirements” of the Cosmetics Regulation [2]. REACH, the EU law that makes companies register their chemicals and provide information on their safety for people and the environment, is a separate regulation, and it can demand animal tests on the same ingredients [5][6]. Knight and colleagues (2021) found 419 chemicals whose REACH dossiers list cosmetics as their only use, 63 of them with animal tests completed after the ban [6]. Registrants mostly used non-animal methods, but some ran new animal tests to meet REACH’s demands for toxicity data and worker safety assessments, and in some cases the European Chemicals Agency rejected non-animal methods and required new animal tests [6].

From 1998 the UK refused licences to test cosmetics, or ingredients used wholly or primarily in them, on animals [5]. From 2019 it began licensing such tests where chemicals law required them, and it issued a small number of time-limited licences up to 2022 [4][5]. When the High Court dismissed Cruelty Free International’s challenge to that change on 5 May 2023, the judge found that the government had made it for pragmatic reasons rather than because the law required it [5]. The judgment called the lack of a public announcement regrettable, but found that all the relevant stakeholders knew of it from a letter and email the Home Office sent in 2022 [5]. Twelve days after the judgment, the Home Secretary announced that no new licences would be granted for chemicals intended exclusively as cosmetic ingredients [4]. That rule is narrower than the 1998 policy, and ingredients that have other uses as well fall outside it.