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By admin, September 4, 2009 12:16 pm

The GreenFly knows the soothing effect of getting all dolled up after a long week in the schmutz trenches.  We like buffing up as much as the next dipteran; and are constantly trying to look as good as our hero:   Dr. Frank N. Furter who sports the most FABULOUS green eye shadow ever!

Dr. Frank N. Furter revealed!

But at what cost, all that glam?

If you’ve been following our tweets (and why wouldn’t you be) you know that last week The GreenFly blogged about animal testing of everything from sutures to aspirin.   Well this week The GreenFly has expanded our probe (we lurv probing) into the cosmetics industry;  here we have two problems – cosmetics tested on animals and cosmetics that use animal products – like fish scales to make nail polish all sparkly – that result in cruel harvesting practices.

Knowing which cosmetics/beauty products  are really green can seem overwhelming we know.  Especially with the laissez faire labeling that goes on.  But here’s a source of really good information that The GreenFly wants every green fashionista and fashionota to know about – after all being green doesn’t mean we all have to look like Devendra Ba nhart fer cripes sake!

Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics’ (CCIC) Leaping Bunny Program. This non-profit runs a cruelty-free assessment of companies producing cosmetic, personal care, and household products.  Companies that are certified as compliant with the CCIC standard receive the “internationally recognized” Leaping Bunny Logo:

The Leaping Bunny Program also certifies that no new animal testing is used in any phase of product development by the company, its laboratories, or suppliers.  On top of all that the CICC provided this super handy shopping guide for compliant companies and just when The GreenFly thought our shopping migraines were over we checked the list and found  that many companies who are certified aren’t using the logo!

WTF!  The CCIC makes a great case why such a easily recognizable logo is needed so why aren’t certified companies using it?  Discerning consumers need a guidepost because there’s shiz like this out in the web-o-sphere:  Tiger Balm claims not to test on animals, but then The GreenFly found this disturbing excerpt of a rabbit test with Tiger Balm in an entry on PubMed; a service sourced from the US National Library of Medicine and the NIH.   This is a handy little tool to look up all the liars and fakers but here’s the balmless rub; the Tiger Balm entry is from 1982 – The GreenFly’s great-great-great-great-great-grandfly was merely an egg at that time…but still.

So we really need the leaping bunny or ball-licking dog or whatever icon to show consumers what’s free of cruel animal practices to be actually USED by the companies that earn the certification. Another imponderable of the universe!

Speaking of imponderables,  here’s a fascinating social experiment:  What guys think of make-up.  If I were in the cosmetics industry I don’t know if I’d be cringing or clapping – they knew the difference between lip gloss and lipstick but all claimed to “hate” make-up on women.

BLOG UPSHOT:  You Can Make a Difference

Despite your drooping eyelids and nodding head this is all not just palaver from The GreenFly.  Oh nay we say, nay!

In this great interview with Berkeley Breathed (of Bloom County fame) The Onion asked if there were “any positions you took back then that you disagree with now, or that you wish you’d addressed differently”?  Breathed responded with this:

“Positions, no. But many of the strips make me physically cringe in the dumb-headed way I went at them… most of which I’ll lay at the feet of inexperience. One rule: The more pissed-off you are about something, the less funny you are. Never good to get involved. I couldn’t, for instance, do justice to animal experimentation. Not funny strips. Effective, though: We got dear Mary Kay to stop squeezing her cold cream into the eyes of rabbits. But not funny. And if you’re not funny, you’re just whining, and you know what I think about whiners.”

Thus The GreenFly ponders another imponderable:  you can’t be funny and kick ass as a Fighter for Green Justice?  Dear gentle reader – whaddya’ think?  We think NAY!

Buzzing off fer now!

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By admin, September 1, 2009 11:51 am

The problem with abundance is that it makes us lazy and wasteful. The more The GreenFly flies around, the more we see this.  We have to be at the precipice of disaster for us to use our resources carefully.

And so it is with animals and their use in testing:  from pure research like genetics and behavioral studies to applied (e.g. commercial) research such as biomedical research, drug testing and toxicology testing for the cosmetics industry and pharmaceuticals.  Animals are even used in defense work (the GreenFly has always claimed that even a monkey could shoot a gun!).

Of course in the current climate of pull-your-own-damn-self-up-regardless-of-whether-you-can-read-write-or-even-hold-a-fork the running attitude is that animals are just another resource that we can exploit:  our pals at The Onion show how totally ridiculous this “logic” is if we run it out to its absurd conclusion:

The Onion News: Should Animals Be Responsible For Their Own Rights?

The GreenFly knows that if animals could unionize, possessed opposable thumbs and had any sense of our history with them on the planet, mankind would be in line for the biggest whup ass ever!  We’ve captured this spirit in one of our shirts

See the little man in the needle?  You’ve been warned!

But since that’s not in the cards we need to start thinking about our animal sisters and brothers as not just another resource that’s been made available to us for our exploitation willy nilly.  Once we do that we can start thinking of other ways to conduct scientific experimentation, exploration and testing.   And the time is now to start thinking about alternatives to just exploiting animals for whatever we need.

The Humane Society of the United State’s website states that:  “The term “alternative” in the context of animal testing is used to describe any change from present procedures that will result in the replacement of animals, a reduction in the numbers used, or a refinement of techniques to alleviate or minimize potential pain, distress and/or suffering.”

And even if a complete replacement of animal testing with alternative test methods is not realistic forn the immediate future. Still, the fact that alternative test methods are being discovered, promoted and implemented is pretty freakin’ encouraging.

A recent article in the Tennessean reported that David Cliffel, a Vanderbilt University chemist, recently received a grant to develop an alternative to animal testing from the Alternatives Research and Development Foundation to “assess the potential of an advanced cell monitoring system for reducing the use of animals in toxicity testing. . . . Cliffel’s system focuses on methods that evaluate chemicals’ effects using human cells and cell cultures instead of relying so heavily on animal studies.”

This form of testing is particularly dependent on animal systems so any new method will have to show itself to be at least as effective.  But there may be other bonuses:  less cost, faster cycling in testing. simpler lab methodologies (without the necessity to feed and house living animals before and during testing) as well as possible simpler assessement and analysis of results.  And of course we get to dispense with the horrible practice of breeding hundreds of animals only for them to be euthanized. This could be the future of alternative toxicity testing and hopefully David Cliffel’s new system proves to be the bellcow to lead all those other sheep, uh we mean, scientists to alternative testing systems.