BOYCOTT PROCTER AND GAMBLE!

WHO ARE PROCTER & GAMBLE?

procter & gamble (p&g) are the world’s largest consumer products company, with an annual turnover of over $68 billion. their international headquarters is in the US city of cincinnati.

traditionally known for their soaps and detergents, p&g now produce a massive range of products in hair care, cosmetics, perfumes, personal hygiene, laundry care, snack food, paper and feminine hygiene, and even pet food. p&g’s brands include ariel, daz, fairy, max factor, olay, pantene pro-v, herbal essences, and head and shoulders. click here for the full list.

why boycott p&g?

p&g admit that guinea pigs, rabbits, hamsters, ferrets, rats and mice are among the animals used in their ‘product safety research’, as well as cats and dogs in pet food experiments. uncaged’s investigations continue to reveal disturbing examples of p&g’s ongoing involvement in painful and lethal animal tests.

procter & gamble exist for one reason, and one reason only - to make as much money as possible. p&g test on animals because of their desire to get new chemical ingredients on to the market. this allows them to claim that their new hair dye, skin cream or washing powder etc. is ‘new, improved’, in the hope of increasing sales. but with many companies producing similar consumer products without carrying out animal tests, it shows that p&g’s cruelty is motivated by greed.

obviously, p&g realise that their behaviour appals most people. sadly, instead of reforming, p&g invest enormous amounts in pr and spin that aims to give a rosy impression of their testing practices. p&g have even been lobbying governments to try to block bans on animal testing for cosmetics that have public support. now, uncaged’s investigations have uncovered p&g’s outrageous plans to carry out massive animal testing programmes for new cosmetics and household product ingredients.

money is the only language p&g understand. ultimately, by boycotting p&g, you hold the key to saving the many thousands of animals who suffer and die every year in cruel and unnecessary tests conducted by this company.

i wrote in my previous post the products this heinous company are responsible for.

P&G’S ANIMAL TESTING

pain for profit

although procter & gamble (p&g) admit that guinea pigs, rabbits, hamsters, ferrets, rats and mice are among the animals used in their ‘product safety research’ [1], the company is highly secretive about what actually happens to the animals they sacrifice.

however, uncaged can reveal disturbing examples of p&g’s involvement in painful and lethal animal tests. apart from pain and injury caused by the chemicals themselves, unfortunately many animals also suffered because of a lack of basic care:

• over a thousand hamsters, mice and rats forced to inhale tiny, ‘nano-sized’ particles
• mice genetically-engineered to create new ways of testing ingredients in cosmetic and cleaning products
• animals injured in hair care and fabric softener skin irritancy tests
• repeated painful and lethal skin allergy tests on guinea pigs and mice

earlier p&g tests [2] include:

• an acute toxicity test where dogs were force fed large amounts of a cleaning chemical by stomach tube [3]
• cancer and toxicity tests on rats and mice of optical brighteners and other washing power ingredients
• long-term poisoning tests in animals for colouring agents
• 71 mice were repeatedly force-fed a synthetic musk fragrance by tube [4]

it’s hard to think of anything more vicious than poisoning and killing animals for the sake of tinkering with cosmetics and washing powder formulations. p&g are responsible for relentless cruelty at its most calculating.

footnotes:

1. ‘finding alternatives for product safety testing’, p&g publication 2005: ‘85% of the animals used for human safety testing are rats or mice; the remainder are mostly guinea pigs, rabbits, hamsters, and ferrets’. for example, it appears that rabbits are used in the notorious draize eye irritancy test and developmental toxicity. (the p&g report at www.pg.com./science/brochure_print.pdf implies that use of the notorious draize eye test continues.)
2. details taken from documents submitted to the us environmental protection agency in the early 1990s.
3. diethylene glycol hexyl ether.
4. stuard, caudill, and lehman-mckeeman (1997). ‘characterization of the effects of musk ketone on mouse hepatic cytochrome p450 enzymes’. fundamental & applied toxicology 40: 264-271.

recent p&g animal tests

gm mice for detergent testing

p&g are involved in genetically-engineering mice to create new ways of testing ingredients for use in products such as laundry liquids, fairy liquid, flash cleaner, skin care, hair products, and other cosmetics.

genetic engineering is known to cause serious animal welfare problems due to the fact that large numbers of animals are involved, surgery and other invasive procedures are used in their creation, and that genetic modification is likely to cause harmful deformities. [1]

in these experiments [2], mice were genetically engineered to be more vulnerable to asthma and lung damage. the substance (a p&g-patent detergent enzyme called ‘subtilisin’) was repeatedly injected into the bodies and up the noses of the mice, causing their lungs to become damaged and filled with blood [3], followed by pneumonia. here, p&g are paving the way for yet more pain and death for animals rather than helping to decrease it.

liver damage in hair care and fabric softener tests

in a p&g skin irritancy test carried out by commercial testing company covance in 2000 [4], 18 rats suffered liver damage, due to their bodies being wrapped too tightly. they are wrapped to stop them licking the chemical off their skins, and in places it suggests that the damage occurred during unwrapping.

one died from such injuries before the end of the test, which occurred despite an earlier p&g paper highlighting this problem. the chemical in question is just described as an ethanol mixture. two p&g patents have been found that refer to ethanol mixtures being used in a hair care product and a fabric softener, and the 2000 study states that “the potential route of exposure to humans is dermal.”

cruelty with nobs on

in the last few years p&g have repeated painful and lethal skin allergy tests on guinea pigs and performed a lethal test on mice, for the sake of a washing powder chemical called 'nobs'.[5] astonishingly, the chemical had been found safe in a massive trial on human volunteers and had been in use for several years.

these tests were not a legal requirement, and this evidence also belies p&g’s claims of minimising animal tests and doing them only as a last resort. this is quite literally overkill.

scientists also acknowledge that these animal tests are highly unreliable. the three guinea pig tests were supposed to be identical, but provided conflicting results. furthermore, the tests on mice and humans contradicted the guinea pig tests!

footnotes:

1. see www.agbiotechnet.com and www.frame.org.uk.
2. xue a. et al. (2005) ‘hla-dq8 is a predisposing molecule for detergent enzyme subtilisin bpnv-induced hypersensitivity’. clinical immunology, 17: 302-315.
3. ‘hemorrhagic edema and alveolar wall damage’.
4. see www.epa.gov.
5. see www.epa.gov.

P&G’S NANOTECHNOLOGY

animal testing for new ‘nano’ particles

p&g are engineering ultra-tiny ‘nano’ particles that can penetrate skin and hair in ways that naturally occurring molecules don’t. the idea is to produce new types of cosmetics and hair care products, and boost p&g’s already colossal profits [1]. one likely use of nanoparticles is in p&g’s olay skin creams. p&g are involved in cruel animal tests of nanoparticles.

a study published in dec 2005 [2] reveals how a thousand hamsters, mice and rats were killed in a test where they were placed in sealed boxes and forced to breath in air contaminated with nanosoot particles. the idea was to see how much damage was caused to the animals’ lungs when they were clogged up with nanoparticles. the lungs of the animals given the highest doses could not cope with the soot, and their lungs were found to have doubled in weight when they were killed and dissected at the end of the test. they suffered severe and persistent lung injury, which was left untreated for several months in many cases.

several animals died before the end of the test due to a lack of basic care, such as nine rats who were not given water. hamsters became ill and died because they were moved into plastic cages, despite the scientists knowing that this could harm them: existing in a laboratory cage itself causes fatal stress.

worse still, the scientists state their intention to perpetuate this kind of research, with the likely inclusion of tests using other nanoparticles. so much for p&g’s claims of trying to stop animal testing.

p&g are also involved in pushing for a massive new animal testing programme to assess how poisonous different nanoparticles are [3]. these painful and lethal tests would include inserting a needle into the animals’ windpipes, force-feeding a large dose of the material [4], and rubbing it into raw, damaged skin.

footnotes:

1. see www.businessweek.com and www.fool.com
2. elder, a. et al. (2005) ‘effects of subchronically inhaled carbon black in three species. i. retention kinetics, lung inflammation, and histopathology’. toxicological sciences, 88 (2) 614-629.
3. oberdorster g. et al. (2005) ‘principles for characterizing the potential human health effects from exposure to nanomaterials: elements of a screening strategy’. particle and fibre toxicology 2005, 2:8. (see www.particleandfibretoxicology.com)
4. ‘exposure should be by a single gavage at a dose which would represent the worse case human exposure’ (oberdörster et al, 2005)

MS / EUKANUBA ANIMAL TESTS

pet food vivisection

iams and eukanuba are p&g brands of pet food. in may 2001 uncaged exposed horrific accounts of cats and dogs used and killed in experiments for iams/eukanuba with a front page story in the national press.

our research uncovered scientific papers that describe iams-funded experiments on hundreds of previously healthy animals that caused: kidney failure, obesity, malnutrition, liver damage, sever allergic reactions, stomach inflammation, diarrhoea, skin disorders, lesions and other painful conditions. many of the animals died as a result of the experiments or were killed and dismembered for tissue analysis.

as a result of this public embarrassment, iams were forced to announce that cats and dogs will no longer be used in experiments that specifically require them to be killed. however, since the new policy, dogs have died as a side-effect of the harmful laboratory procedures and housing conditions that iams have subjected them to.

in fact, an iams executive has stated that he sees no problem with cats and dogs spending their entire lives in cages for experiments. animal welfare experts have found that keeping animals in a laboratory environment for long periods of time causes physical and psychological damage, and a poor quality of life.

most disturbingly, when pushed, iams admit that other species of animals will still be killed in their laboratory experiments.

all information is taken from uncaged.co.uk