Stop Botox animal testing

---

Botox is the brand name of one of the products containing the nerve poison botulinum toxin. The toxin is used for medical and increasingly for cosmetic applications. A small injection causes facial wrinkles to disappear. But the price for the short term 'beauty' is paid by the suffering and death of thousands of mice.
Each batch is tested before it reaches consumers. A sample is injected into the abdomen of mice. The mice suffer paralysis, impaired vision and respiratory distress. After three or four days of suffering, they die from suffocation. The ECEAE has supported the campaign 'Stop Botox animal testing' since 2009 to inform the public, to put pressure on the manufacturers still testing on animals as well as on authorities to speed up the validation and implementation of animal-free methods and to remove the mouse assay in the EU legislation.

Success

---

Animal-free testing methods are already available, but not all manufacturers use these. In 2011 the campaign led to a first success: market leader Allergan got a regulatory approval for a non-animal test in the US, Canada and the EU. The German company Merz received an approval for a cell-based assay in 2015. In August 2018, the French manufacturer Ipsen finally received approval in the EU and Switzerland for a cell-based test - 7 years after Allergan. However, all three companies replace only a large part of their animal experiments. Despite these successes, still tenthousands of  mice per year are subjected to a cruel death by asphyxiation in Europe only.

 

In April 2023, a delegation of the ECEAE handed-in more than 164,000 signatures collected across Europe to the European Medicine Agency (EMA) in Amsterdam. As a result the 3R Working Party of the EMA put the issue on their agenda, recognising the need to discuss how best to develop and promote the use of alternatives to this form of testing.

 

 

The ECEAE delegation, Emeline Gorgeon, Jenn Scannell, and Dr. Corina Gericke at the EMA in Amsterdam.