Most families treat their pets like a member of the family. These pets are showered with love, care, a good home and plenty of food to eat. But not all animals are as lucky as many pets. Millions of animals are killed, poisoned, and abused every year because of animal testing in the United States. Last year, the European Union banned the sale of any cosmetic ingredients tested on animals. Israel and India are also joining the fight against animal testing in cosmetics. These countries have banned all animal testing for cosmetic purposes. China, not far behind, has just approved its first non-animal test for cosmetics. Many countries are making great strides in eliminating animal testing for cosmetics or have already done so, but the United States appears to be lagging behind. The FDA defines cosmetics as "articles intended to be rubbed, poured, sprinkled or sprayed, introduced into, or otherwise applied to the human body...to cleanse, beautify, promote attractiveness, or alter appearance" [Act FD&C, sec. 201(i)]. This definition includes moisturizers, perfumes, makeup, hair products, and cleaning products. None of these products are essential to human existence, but we produce them every day. on a large scale and the consequences are worrying. The most common animals used in cosmetic testing are mice, rats, rabbits and guinea pigs, but dogs, cats, primates, birds, fish and amphibians. are no strangers to animal testing. These animals are subjected to excruciating testing for cosmetic products, including but not limited to skin and eye irritation testing, repeated force-feeding studies and. LD50 tests. These tests are considered toxicity tests and are extremely cruel...... middle of paper ......r testing the products. EpiSkin™, EpiDerm™ and SkinEthic can save thousands of pets each year by eliminating skin corrosion and irritation testing. The bovine corneal opacity and permeability test and the isolated chicken eye test are also examples of alternatives to animal research. These alternatives use eyes from animals slaughtered for the meat industry. The carcasses of these animals are usually simply thrown away, wasting much of the animal. Instead, these usually abandoned animals can now be used to test for eye irritation from a chemical. Although this is still an animal test, these two alternatives could save thousands of live rabbits that would be used in Draize's test. The local lymph node reduction test for skin allergy testing can eliminate the need to test guinea pigs and mice. This method has already reduced the use of animals in skin irritation tests by 75%..