Most personal cosmetics and household cleaning materials, and also all the particular chemical ingredients of such products are tested on animals. There is a ban on testing in the Czech Republic as well as in several other countries, but the majority of cosmetics that consumers can buy here are produced in other countries. The EU ban on testing for cosmetic purposes has been in force since 2009, nevertheless it will be fully valid only after 2013. Also, the CZ ban is still not complete as it contains several exceptions, and is not valid for household products.

The consumers are always not fully informed of living conditions of lab animals nor of a nature of tests that are being conducted on them and their alternatives.

Animals are supplied to labs either form specialized breeds or directly from nature and most commonly used animals are mice, rats, guinea pigs, cats, dogs, monkeys. Eyes and skin sensitivity are the most frequently used tests, however more specialized test are being performed, too. Tests are often painful for animas as painkillers are not administered at all times. From a behaviour and welfare point of the view, basic needs are not being fulfilled as animals are housed separately in a poor environment with no or just limited amount of stimuli and with no possibility to fulfil their social needs. Moreover, inappropriate handling by the lab stuff was proved in many cases – same as sometimes it happens in animal farming.

Nowadays, producers can choose from many already approved ingredients. There are also a lot of alternative tests in case producers want to test some new chemical component. Thus, it is only the decision of a producer whether or not to use animals. In principle, testing on animals can be fully stopped

A useful tool for how to distinguish products without the use of animals are again systems of certain certifications. However, sometimes it is possible to find a few different logos, e.g. a rabbit in a triangle, or the sentence, “not tested on animals”, in various graphic designs. These logos are misleading and misrepresentative, because even if the final product itself was not tested on animals, it is very probable that the ingredients were. Some strict conditions regarding the testing of the components are necessary, and they can be reached only through some special certificates - HCS (Humane Cosmetic Standard) and HHPS (Humane Household Products Standard), while the first one regards personal cosmetics, and the other one household products. Products labelled with such logos were not tested on animals, nor were the chemical ingredients used in the product. Third party testing is also controlled as well as compliance with the “cutoff date” set in advance after which no testing can be conducted. For more information please see www.buav.org.

There are also several other certificates that inform about animal testing, however none of them is as strict as the above-mentioned ones. One example is the Vegan and Vegan Certified logos

Similarly, the so called natural cosmetics certificates refer to animal testing, although the prime information of this system is whether the components of a product’s origin is from organic farming, or whether it is a chemical substance.

One of the natural cosmetic logos is the BDIH logo that guarantees the natural origin of some ingredients, but does not provide any information about whether they come from organic farming or not.

This is certified by EcoCert ECO (95 % of ingredients of natural origin from which 50 % from organic agriculture) and the stricter EcoCert BIO (95 % from organic agriculture) logos.

Another label is the Soil Association Certification that you can find also within the ORGANIC section

There are also Czech natural cosmetics logos: The CPK certificate specifies a minimum amount of ingredients of natural origin, the CPK bio logo additionally provides information that at least 10% of the ingredients come from organic agriculture.