Today is Boycott Procter & Gamble Day (every third Saturday of May). It is part of the campaign that Uncaged.co.uk runs against Procter & Gamble’s animal testing. In some parts of the world there will be demonstrations, stunts, and leaflets at Procter & Gamble facilities, supermarkets, and town centers, as well as supermarket sweeps of Procter & Gamble products, and displays in libraries, colleges, and workplaces. A downloadable leaflet is available.

Since Procter & Gamble are the world’s largest cruel consumer products company — with an annual income of $68 billion — I think it’s great to boycott it. Procter & Gamble admits that it uses guinea pigs, rabbits, hamsters, ferrets (ferrets? why? wait, I don’t want to know), rats, and mice in the name of “product safety research” and dog and cats in invasive, inhumane pet food testing experiments. Procter & Gamble claims that it only tests on animals as a last resort, but in fact, none of its products, other than its prescription drugs, are required to have animal testing done on them, and a memo was leaked recently that shows that Procter & Gamble has been lobbying behind the scenes to stop the ban on animal testing in the EU that will go into effect in 2013. Furthermore, P&G is investing money into the development of several new types of animal tests. Uncaged.co.uk claims that money is the only language Procter & Gamble understand, and that by boycotting Procter & Gamble, consumers can save thousands of animals who suffer and die every year in cruel and unnecessary tests. I agree completely.

This will be the 11th annual Boycott Procter & Gamble Day, and it is hoped to be the largest one yet. Last year 165 separate events took place across the world — reports about it are available here.

So, take a stand against Procter & Gamble — don’t buy any of their products today. None of their non-prescription drug products are life-saving — there is no need for P&G to cause animal suffering. You can find more information about P&G’s animal testing here.

The complete list of Procter & Gamble products is available at www.pg.com. Unfortunately, this list includes most name brand consumer products available at drug store and grocery stores — your best bet is to buy stuff approved of by the CCIC list or from small-time companies that don’t sell any of their products in drug stores. For starters, don’t buy Febreze, Old Spice, Secret, Charmin, Pampers, Luvs, Puffs, Duracell, Camay, Ivory, Noxzema, Olay, Zest, CoverGirl, Max Factor, Cascade, Dawn, Joy, Always, Tampax, Aussie, Head & Shoulders, Herbal Essences, Infusium, Pantene, Clairol, Braun, Fibersure, Metamucil, Pepto-Bismol, Prilosec OTC, Vicks, Bounty, Mr. Clean, Swiffer, Bounc, Cheer, Downy, Tide, Crest, Fixodent, Scope, Oral B, Eukanuba, Iams, Lacoste fragrane, Naomi Campbell fragrance, Puma fragrance, Gillette, Folgers, and Pringles. (Actually, I assume Procter & Gamble does not perform animal tests on Pringles, so go ahead and don’t boycott them.)

I think it’s a great idea to boycott these products for one day — you can see if you can live without them. A lot of times it’s more fun to buy products from small-time companies on the CCIC list — they use higher quality ingredients, you feel like you’re buying from real people, they have a quirky sense of fun that large P&G companies just don’t have. Also, it’s really hard to give up P&G stuff all the time — one day is a really good start. When I first started buying cruelty-free products I had a vague notion that I didn’t want to cause animal suffering but I gave up after a while because it’s just too difficult to stop buying P&G stuff that surrounds me at the grocery store and Long’s — it’s a lot of effort to research every product I buy, and sometimes I could only find weird-zen-hippy (I’m sorry cool hippy product companies! I like a lot of zen-hippy products!) alternatives to my favorite cruel P&G products (ahem — why are so many cruelty-free deodorants crystal and herb based? I’d like a few more that use aluminum and are scentless). But just giving up P&G for one day is not too much trouble, I swear — give it a try.

So, boycott P&G! Prevent needless animal suffering! Think of the ferrets!

Categories : against animal testing, cruelty free