As the world shifts towards eliminating the use of animals in cosmetics testing, a private member’s bill in the Senate is looking to ban the practice in Canada.

If passed, Bill S-214 — the ‘Cruelty-Free Cosmetics Act’ — would prohibit cosmetics testing on animals in Canada and amend the Food and Drugs Act to ban the sale of cosmetics developed or manufactured using animal testing. It also would establish that no evidence derived from animal testing may be used to establish the safety of a cosmetic.

Already, more than 37 major economies around the world — including India and Israel — have enacted laws prohibiting or restricting cosmetic animal testing and trade. The European Union has been a leader on this front, having banned testing within the union in 2009. By March of 2013, the EU had established a complete ban on the sale of cosmetics developed through animal testing — regardless of where in the world the testing took place. In the United States, Australia, Brazil and Latin America, similar bills are under discussion.

“Animal testing for cosmetics purposes is a backward practice that has no place in Canada in 2017,” Conservative Sen. Carolyn Stewart-Olsen, the bill’s sponsor, told the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology late last week .

“We know the process of testing substances on living animals, despite assurances from drug and cosmetics companies, is often tortuous and cruel.”

There’s little doubt about that, but Canadian Federation of Humane Societies CEO Barbara Cartwright wanted to remind committee members just what those tests look like.

“They can involve dripping a chemical substance into the eye of, typically, rabbits, which are placed in restraining stocks,” she said. “Their eyelids are held open with clips, in some cases for days at a time, to keep them from blinking away the test solution.

“Or skin tests, where animals’ fur is shaved and then several layers of skin are removed with sticky tape before technicians apply test substances and cover over the abraded area with plastic sheeting, often causing intense burning, itching and pain (that) can leave the patient ulcerated and bleeding.”

In some cases, animals are force-fed megadoses of a test chemical — sometimes every day for weeks, months or years. That amounts to chemical poisoning — and test animals receive no pain relief.

In her opening remarks, Stewart-Olsen referred to a disturbing investigation broadcast by CTV’s W5 in March that showed mistreatment of dogs, pigs and monkeys used for testing at a Montreal-based facility. She said it’s worth noting that nothing in Canada’s Food and Drugs Act or the cosmetics regulations require the use of animal testing for cosmetics or their ingredients.

“I am not an animal rights activist,” she said. “(But) with that reality in mind, I believe it is timely and relevant for us to join the more than 30 countries that have banned this practice.”

Although the Canadian Council on Animal Care is responsible for setting standards for the care and use of animals in science, assessing and certifying participating institutions and providing education and training to meet best-practices, there are weaknesses — which is why Bill S-214 is important, she said.

For example: Private organizations or corporations are not required to adhere to CCAC guidelines. As well, the council has undergone significant funding cuts and now in part relies on the institutions it is monitoring for funding. It also lacks regulatory powers to compel institutions to comply.

“Sadly, Canadian policy on this issue lags behind public opinion, scientific and research community opinion and other jurisdictions,” Cartwright told the committee. “Canada lags behind sister jurisdictions when it comes to animal welfare legislation in general. We have no comprehensive animal welfare legislation that would govern the use of animals in Canada. Rather, it is piecemeal, sorely out of date and often out of step with current animal welfare science.”

Polling done by the Strategic Counsel on behalf of the Humane Society International found that 88 per cent of Canadians believe that testing the safety of cosmetics isn’t worth causing animals pain and suffering, especially when there are safe ingredients readily available.

Further, Stewart-Olsen said 81 per cent believe the practice should be outlawed entirely as proposed in Bill S-214.

What may come as a surprise to some is that the science informing animal testing of cosmetics is by no means established.

Troy Seidle, the global head of research and toxicology with the Humane Society International in Toronto, said most of the tests animals are subjected to were developed more than half a century ago; some date back to the 1920s.

“Most have never been scientifically validated according to modern standards to confirm they are actually accurate at predicting health effects for you or me out in the real world. What we do know from published literature over the decades is that even closely-related species like rats and mice only predict each other on average with 60 per cent accuracy. Animal-to-human concordance is typically lower,” he told the committee.

A decade ago, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences published a report entitled Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: A Vision and a Strategy.

“It acknowledged the limitations of using animals to predict human safety and called for a paradigm shift in toxicology,” Seidle said.

Stewart-Olsen insists her bill isn’t meant to demonize Canada’s cosmetics industry. In fact, she noted that in recent decades, cosmetics companies in Canada, like many others around the world, have been reducing their use of animal testing voluntarily.

“The industry will tell you in the course of this study that very little animal testing actually occurs in Canada. We don’t have exact numbers for Canada, but if we look at the European Union, prior to their legislated ban, only 0.0125 per cent of animal tests were related to cosmetics,” she said.

Today, more than 500 cosmetic companies have been certified as cruelty-free. They rely on 20,000 existing (and already tested) ingredients to make their products, combined with a growing list of products being tested using state-of-the-art alternative testing.

Driven by customer demand, the cruelty-free cosmetics market is growing. A recent report from Market Research Future indicates that the market share owned by cruelty-free manufacturers will expand by 6.1 per cent over the next five years.

“It is possible to be a strong Canadian manufacturer and retailer and compete in the global market without relying on animal testing,” Stewart-Olsen said, adding that with the Canada-Europe free trade agreement (CETA) now in force, Bill S-214 will open up the European market to Canadian companies.

The committee heard from LUSH Fresh Handmade Cosmetics, which was born from the cruelty-free movement 20 years ago. After starting with a single shop in the U.K., the company now runs 931 shops in 49 countries, as well as 38 websites shipping its products worldwide. Last year its brand sales were £723 millions sterling ($1.2 billion Canadian) — an increase of 26 per cent on the previous year. This year, the company expects to hit the £1 billion sterling mark.

“While we’re by no means one of the bigger players in the global cosmetics market, we’re no longer a small presence,” Hilary Jones, LUSH’s global ethics director, told senators. “We hope that the figures prove to you that a company can grow and scale up to global level without ever resorting to animal testing. We have always believed that (it’s) a crude Victorian model that is not fit for modern times.”

Her colleague, Tricia Stevens, manager of charitable giving and ethical campaigns, was blunt: The measures proposed in Bill S-214 will have no impact on LUSH’s ability to be competitive in regions that already have taken steps to end or ban animal testing.

“Canada needs to consider that, with a lack of legislation on our part, Canadian companies will face trade barriers as increasing numbers of companies pass similar legislation,” she said.

The cosmetic sector is unique among regulated product areas in that new animal testing largely doesn’t happen, Seidle said. There are also new, non-animal-based testing methods available today that have been validated for hundreds of chemicals — and are faster, cheaper and more predictive than animal testing.

“This bill, as with its counterparts worldwide, the intent is really to legislate what for the vast majority of companies is the status quo,” he said.

While some countries — notably China — still require animal testing on cosmetics as a pre-market condition, the committee heard it’s only a matter of time before that changes as well.

Seidle said the many legislative measures being introduced in other jurisdictions threaten to box China out of world markets, as it has been barred from the European market already.

“They don’t want to be the odd man out,” he said. “They want ‘made in China’ to be a sign of honour. They’re trying to catch up … (so) if Canada and the United States and other markets continue that trend, we’ll get there faster.”

The University of Windsor, meanwhile, is launching the Canadian Centre for Alternatives to Animal Methods. It will focus on research development and models based on human biology. Dr. Charu Chandrasekera, the centre’s founder and director, is particularly keen to further delve into organoid modelling, which uses adult human stem cells to grow three-dimensional structures.

The centre also will create academic programs in science to replace animal testing and work with Canadian regulatory bodies to accelerate development validation and acceptance of alternative models of animal testing in Canada.

Chandrasekera said while lab rats are very much associated with lab work, the time has come to think outside the cage.

“Yes, we’ve used animals for decades — it’s not working,” she told The Windsor Star in July. “When you have a 95 per cent failure to translate from animal models to human clinical trials, there’s something wrong with the paradigm.”

On Wednesday, the committee will hear from the Cosmetics Alliance Canada.