Animal testing for cosmetics: how Asia is changing

摘要

One of the trickiest issues for cosmetics firms in the last two years has been the different regulations on animal testing in Europe and Asia. The European Union (EU) has moved steadily over the last decade to tighten regulations, ending animal testing first for finished products, then for most, followed by all ingredient tests and, in 2013, for imports as well. Meanwhile, China required every cosmetic product to be submitted to the authorities for testing, a process that always involved animal testing. Most other Asian countries were somewhere in between, accepting alternatives in principle but often testing on animals in practice. Faced with this wildly diverse environment, what can companies trading internationally do?