Over the past two years, plant-based food consumption has grown by 49% across the EU, reaching a total sales volume of €3.6 billion.
Unilever actively embraces "cruelty-free cosmetics"
2025-05-16
Saving cruelty-free cosmetics: working towards a Europe free of animal testing
Dr Julia Fentem, Global Head of Safety, Environment and Regulatory Science, gives her thoughts on recent events ahead of the European Commission’s response to the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) “Save Cruelty-Free Cosmetics – Towards a Europe without Animal Testing”
As a leading advocate and pioneer in using cutting-edge non-animal science to design safe and sustainable chemicals and products, Unilever has been a key member of the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), “Save Cruelty-Free Cosmetics – Towards a Europe without Animal Testing”, for the past two years.
In January 2023, it reached over 1.2 million verified signatures.
Following preliminary meetings between ECI organisers and the European Commission, a public hearing was held on 25 May by a European Parliament committee.
Dr. Julia Fentem of Unilever was invited to speak alongside Dr. Julia Baines of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) on ending animal testing for all cosmetic ingredients. The European Commission's formal response and action plan must be published by July 25, 2023.
The 2009 EU cosmetics testing ban was a major stimulus for significant progress in non-animal safety science and the development of a new toolbox for assessing consumer, worker, and environmental safety without resorting to new animal testing. Rapid advances in science and technology mean that we can generate more relevant safety data faster and in greater quantities using innovative non-animal methods.
This ECI should be viewed in the context of developing regulations that promote better human health and environmental protection, as well as better animal protection.
Unilever hopes that the high level of support for ECI among EU citizens will mean that, at the very least, relevant EU policies and regulations will be changed so that they promote transparency and adhere to the key legislative principle that “any animal testing is a last resort”.
There is now greater openness within both industry and regulatory circles to building new scientific capabilities in non-animal methods. In a background document for a May 2023 workshop on the transition to an animal-free regulatory system for industrial chemicals, the European Chemicals Agency noted that “it is possible to develop robust options based on non-animal methods that could provide comparable or higher levels of protection than current ones for many toxicological properties”.
We are at a regulatory tipping point for the use of modern, non-animal safety science for chemical registration purposes; it is crucial that the European Commission responds proactively and progressively to the demands of EU citizens.
As a priority, we must address the European Commission’s mandate for cosmetic ingredients to use non-animal methods to ensure worker and environmental safety, as well as consumer safety. This should have been done 10 years ago; let’s not delay any longer.