On 20th December 2022, the Bill PLC 70/2014 which aims to ban animal tests for the manufacture of cosmetics was approved unanimously in the Brazilian Senate. The bill will now proceed to the House of Representatives, where it will be reviewed in committees. More than 1.6 million signatures were gathered in a Change.org petition delivered to the President of the House, Rodrigo Pacheco.
The NGO Te Protejo led the campaign “Free yourself from cruelty” in partnership with Humane Society International (HSI). The campaign also engages supporters in other countries, as is the case of Mexico where it was also successful in September 2021.
Grégor Daflon, the campaigns analyst at Change.org, said the following: “The popular pressure to ban the use of animals in testing for the toiletries, cosmetics and perfumes industry was huge for the bill to be discussed and approved in the Senate. After all, there were more than 1,600,000 signatures in defence of the lives of animals. This battle isn’t over yet and we keep an eye on it! We hope that the discussion in the House will be swift and that the final decision will be favourable to the appeal.”
The Humane Society International leads the campaign #LiberteSeDaCrueldade in many countries. At the moment, in addition to Brazil, similar legislative actions are being carried out in countries such as Chile, Mexico, the United States, Canada, South Africa and also in the Southeast Asian region. Testing cosmetics on animals has been banned in nearly 40 countries, such as India, South Korea, Guatemala, and the European Union. The United States has not banned it yet at a national level, but recently the state of Louisiana joined California, Nevada, Illinois, Virginia, Maryland, Maine, Hawaii, and New Jersey in banning it.
