Despite EU cosmetics ban: Tens of thousands of mice suffer for Botox tests every year
- Press release
Ireland as a Hotspot for Botox Animal Testing
A recent report by the Austrian animal welfare organization Tierschutz Austria exposes serious abuses in animal testing for Botox products in Europe. Tens of thousands of mice are made to suffer and die, even though animal testing for cosmetics is banned and cruelty-free testing methods have long been available. Moreover, the mice tortured to death are not even fully accounted for in official statistics. Doctors Against Animal Experiments is calling on politicians and authorities, together with Tierschutz Austria, to finally ban these particularly cruel tests.
Since 2007, Doctors Against Animal Experiments has been fighting against the so-called LD50 test, in which each batch of the neurotoxin botulinum toxin – commonly known as Botox – is tested on mice. The mice are injected with varying concentrations of the substance into their abdominal cavities to determine the dose at which 50% of the animals die. The mice suffer from paralysis and respiratory distress and eventually die of suffocation. Yet, as early as 2011, validated cruelty-free assays such as cell-based tests have been available. However, the use of these alternatives is not legally mandatory.
Now, Tierschutz Austria has published a new report presenting up-to-date figures and facts. The organization has revealed that Ireland has become a European hotspot for Botox animal testing. In 2022 alone, about 75% of all regulatory animal experiments in the country – roughly 36,000 mice – were related to Botox. For 2024, over 100,000 mice have already been approved for such tests in Ireland, with numbers continuing to rise.
A major issue is the lack of transparency in the European reporting system. While new animal testing projects must be published in the public ALURES database, this requirement does not apply to project extensions. According to Tierschutz Austria, this loophole is being exploited extensively: in Ireland, existing Botox projects have been extended, resulting in the suffering and death of tens of thousands more animals without them appearing in the official statistics.
“In Germany, according to the official database Animaltestinfo.de, the last recorded approval for Botox batch testing involved 22,500 mice in 2021,” says Dr. med. vet. Corina Gericke, Vice Chair of Doctors Against Animal Experiments. “Since then, no further Botox animal tests have been recorded in this source. It cannot be ruled out that project extensions are being used here as well to make the number of animals used appear lower than it actually is.”
Particularly explosive: despite the EU-wide ban on animal testing for cosmetic purposes, tens of thousands of mice continue to be used annually – even when Botox is used solely for aesthetic purposes. The reason lies in a legal loophole: because injectable products like Botox are classified as medicinal products, they are exempt from the cosmetics animal testing ban. The report also reveals that aesthetic Botox procedures have skyrocketed from fewer than one million in 2000 to nearly 90 million in 2023. In Europe, an annual market growth of almost 5% is expected through 2030.
Doctors Against Animal Experiments criticizes the fact that each manufacturer must develop and validate their own cruelty-free cell-based tests – a complex and resource-intensive process. Moreover, these animal-free tests must be validated against animal test data, while animal testing itself is simply accepted as the standard.
As part of its long-running campaign, DAAE, along with its partners from the European Coalition to End Animal Experiments (ECEAE), submitted over 165,000 signatures to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in Amsterdam in 2023. “We are calling on politicians and authorities to finally ban Botox animal testing and legally require the use of animal-free methods,” says Dr Gericke. Tierschutz Austria has launched a petition against Botox animal testing and is calling for public support.