Cruelty to animals....
I received this on an egroup I belong to:
“The following link gives you an indication of the kind of pain and sufferings the animals face due to this. It also gives us a comprehensive list of the products which “are tested on animals” and those “which are not tested on animals”.
http://www.petaindia.com/lcaringc.html
Surprisingly, many well-known brands are on this list.”
How to prevent the average customer from buying these brands, and go for the “animal friendly” brands?
The average consumer, if bombarded by publicity on this issue, will go for an alternative…only if the brands are clearly spelt out. But usually, a lot of publicity about the brands that use such animal testing methods (without fearing to name names) is not done because of their money power. There is also the fear of being dragged to courts and worse.
Another problem I also see is that sometimes anything “without” is made MORE expensive than anything “with”. “Without pesticides”, “Without artificial additives”, “without animal testing”….all these kind of products are sometimes made so much more expensive that the paying public just goes for the cheaper alternative; after all, no image of a suffering animal comes before their eyes at that moment.
Also, not everyone gets senstized to these issues even after publicity; and to them, what is more important is the savings to their purse. I once asked one lady not to buy one of the brands that she was talking about; she shrugged and said, “Well, if I stop buying this product, do you mean to tell me that all cruelty to animals in this world will stop? Why, we are not even able to prevent cruelty to women and children in this country, leave alone the world…” I might disagree with her buying the brand, but I could not refute her logic.
All we can do is generate lots of positive publicity about the brands which don’t use animal testing, and make it “cool” for people to buy those brands; it should become a matter of prestige to say, “I buy only XYZ”….I never underestimate the power of pride and prestige! If this becomes associated with the product, the paying public usually takes trouble to buy it. Take the case of leather, which is associated with a plush lifestyle…people pay extra to use leather goods and leather upholstery. If we could bring this “cachet” to cosmetics which are animal-friendly, who knows, one day we need not torture our fellow-beings on this planet in order to enhance our appearance.
The anti-fur brigade, for example, has almost made it fashionable to buy faux fur, rather than real. They do everything possible to reinforce this…they show pictures of baby animals being slaughtered, for example…both negative and positive images are used to make their point. But too much of negative publicity becomes evangelism and the average customer is indifferent to this. So a middle path has to be taken. It will be a long and arduous road….