For decades, posters depicting rabbits with inflamed, reddened eyes symbolised campaigns against the testing of cosmetics on animals. Now the most severe of those tests are to be banned across the European Union.

The so-called Draize tests are a series of notorious procedures that involve applying cosmetics ingredients to the eyes and skin of live laboratory rabbits. The animals’ reactions are used to gauge whether the ingredient is an irritant or not. However, on 27 April the independent scientific advisory committee of the European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods (ECVAM) in Ispra, Italy, approved a series of humane …