Help enact law against animal testing for cosmetics

                                                                               HSUS infographic

Would you like your creamy smooth lipstick quite as much if you knew the chemicals in it were tested on live animals?  How about your special shampoo: Does a live animal’s suffering to test its chemical ingredients make it or you feel extra special?  And your deodorant may make you feel safer – but not the animals involved in testing its efficacy. . . .  

“For decades, animals have been used in painful, harmful testing that has determined the safety of chemicals used in cosmetics.  New techniques by which to test cosmetics, however, like conducting tests on synthetic material that mimics human skin and using advanced computer modeling are available to us today.”  --from the testimony of Anthony Verrelli (D-15), a primary sponsor of New Jersey’s “Humane Cosmetics Act.” 

And according to the Humane Society of the US, “There are thousands of existing ingredients with a history of safe use, which allow cosmetics companies to create innovative products without the need for new animal testing.  For new ingredients, non-animal test methods exist.”

What are we waiting for?  Just one thing: Governor Murphy signing the bill into law.  It’s been on his desk since easily moving through the legislature.  Maybe he’s waiting to hear from . . . YOU, urging him to sign it.  Just think: if enacted, the law would prevent the sale of cosmetics that have been newly tested on animals!  

Your course is clear: Please contact Governor Murphy – now!  Ask him to sign S1726/A795, the New Jersey Humane Cosmetics Act, into law.  Tweet: @GovMurphy or e-mail: constituent. relations@NJ.Gov.  

Early-summer sightings

They may be a bane to gardeners, but I’m always happy to see groundhogs, especially the chubby babies, at the edge of a nearby park.  Lots of them right now.

Fawns too, unfortunately.  The other day, three sweet, spotted and so-vulnerable babies under a highway bridge looked to be moving tentatively toward the grassy hill nearby and away from the traffic.  I could only hope. 

As of June 29, fireflies, aka “lightning bugs,” reappeared after dusk.  And a ladybug who had made it inside was transported to an outdoor garden (“fly away home!”). 

What are you seeing?     

 ‘What the world needs now. . .’

In How to Love Animals: In a Human-shaped World, author Harry Mance explores what people living in our destructive Anthropocene Era can do to help -- and hopefully save -- the animals of the Earth.  Early on, he observes that loving animals is "one of western society's core values," yet the thoughtless, often inhumane ways that people treat animals go against this principle and "rational thinking."

Drawing on research and interviews, Mance (chief features writer for the Financial Times) brings to light the many contradictions in the human-animal relationship and offers insights into how people can protect an animal kingdom in crisis.  A former meat-eater turned vegan, he has witnessed, and questioned, the taking of animal lives for human consumption, and investigated alternatives to meat.  

With high awareness of climate change and the ecological disaster it foretells for all terrestrial life, Mance’s book aims to foster greater sensitivity toward the animal world as a whole and to recognize the Earth as more than just a "human-shaped" space.   

Enough

by Robin Chapman

There is always enough.
       My old cat of long years, who
              stayed all the months of his dying,

though, made sick by food,
       he refused to eat, till, long-stroked,
              he turned again to accept

another piece of dry catfood
       or spoonful of meat, a little water,
              another day through which

he purred, small engine
       losing heat—I made him nests
              of pillow and blanket, a curve of body

where he curled against my legs,
       and when the time came, he slipped out
              a loose door into the cold world

whose abundance included
              the death of his choosing.

("Enough" by Robin Chapman, from Abundance. © Cider Press, 2009. Reprinted with permission in The Writer’s Almanac for July 20, 2014.)

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