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Canada Can Be The Next Country To Ban Cosmetic Animal Testing

Cosmetic animal testing is still legal in eight out of every 10 countries worldwide, including Canada. So we are asking Canadians to join us in a #DayofAction on September 13 to urge our elected officials in Ottawa to get behind the Cruelty-Free Cosmetics Act and make Canada the next country to #BeCrueltyFree.
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The goal of the #BeCrueltyFree campaign is simple enough: to create a world where no animal has to suffer and die for the sake of cosmetics. Sadly, cosmetic animal testing is still legal in eight out of every 10 countries worldwide, including Canada. So we are asking Canadians to join us in a #DayofAction on September 13 to urge our elected officials in Ottawa to get behind the Cruelty-Free Cosmetics Act and make Canada the next country to #BeCrueltyFree.

Globally, as many as 500,000 animals a year endure the cruelty of having cosmetic chemicals forced down their throat, dripped into their eyes or smeared onto their skin as they are left to suffer for days or weeks on end without pain relief, ultimately ending in death.

Yet animal testing for cosmetics is unreliable and obsolete. Many of these animal tests were first developed in the 1930s and 1940s when researchers only had a very basic understanding of how chemicals react in the body. These practices continue unabated and have hardly changed.

Common animal tests include the Draize eye test where rabbits are restrained at the neck so that chemicals can be dripped in their eye and observed for signs of reddening, swelling or worse. Acute toxicity tests typically use mice or rats who are force fed chemicals via a tube or syringe directly into their stomach, often in mega-doses, to observe signs of poisoning such as seizures, tremors, internal bleeding, coma and death.

The good news is that these cruel practices could stop today without any harm to consumers. Hundreds of thriving cruelty-free companies have already sworn off animal testing, yet still produce new, safe and fabulous beauty products by relying on thousands of safe ingredients already on the market, as well as an ever-growing list of non-animal testing methods.

#BeCrueltyFree Canada, led by Humane Society International and Animal Alliance of Canada, has been pounding the pavement in Ottawa, laying the political groundwork that resulted in the introduction of the Cruelty-Free Cosmetics Act in late 2015. Currently under review in the Senate, the bill's next stop will be the House of Commons.

We're calling on all Canadians to make this Tuesday, September 13 a #DayofAction and help us send a message to the government to ban cosmetic animal testing in Canada:

• Go to becrueltyfree.ca and sign the petition to ask your Member of Parliament to support the Cruelty-Free Cosmetics Act;

• Share and "like" our tweets, as well as those of our celebrity friends (Bif Naked: @BifNaked / Lauren Toyota: @LaurenToyota / Phoebe Dykstra: @PhoebeDykstra / Laura Vandervoort: @Vandiekins22 / Tricia Helfer: @trutriciahelfer) and campaign partners;

• Read and share our #DayofAction blog posts which will be posted on Twitter at @hsi_canada;

• Learn more about our corporate partners, who offer no shortage of cruelty-free alternatives to animal-tested products.

More than 30 countries, including the whole of the European Union, Norway, Israel and India have already gone cruelty-free. It's time Canada joins them and puts an end to this needless suffering.

Help us give a voice to the voiceless and make Canada the next country to #BeCrueltyFree. Show your support now.

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