The European Parliament in Strasbourg approved a new law on 15 January to ban the sale of virtually all animal-tested cosmetic products in the European Union from 2009. Following ten years of delicate negotiations and strong lobbying from the cosmetics industry, animal testing, currently only forbidden in the UK, Belgium, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, will be outlawed in all fifteen member states. The new legislation will also close a loophole which allows the sale of beauty and hygiene products that have been tested elsewhere in the world. The new legislation is intended to force them the cosmetic industry to find alternative methods of experimentation. While animal rights groups have welcomed the new rules they have also criticised them for not going far enough. The new European legislation, they say, will only apply to 11 out of the 14 animal tests currently in use.
