Lush calls for end to lethal dose tests with Animal Aid

Lush has partnered with Animal Aid to support its 'time for better science' campaign, which calls for the replacement of "outdated and cruel" lethal dose tests.

At the centre of the campaign is Animal Aid’s petition to encourage the government, industry regulators, pharmaceutical and chemical companies to eliminate the ‘Lethal Dose 50’ test.

Ahead of World Day for Animals in Laboratories on 24 April 2023, Animal Aid has partnered with Lush to promote the initiative and call on the public to use their voices.

As part of this, the campaign will be displayed in the windows of all Lush UK and Ireland stores until 26 April. In addition, on 18 April, the brand's Oxford Street flagship will be "harking back to the 1920s", which is when the current LD50 tests were developed.

The LD50 test, which is still currently in use, involves giving increasing doses of toxic substances to groups of animals, usually mice, until 50% of them are killed.

Instead of using animals to try to determine what is poisonous to humans, a new test has been developed by British laboratory XCellR8 and part-funded by Animal Aid.

The AcutoX test exposes ethically sourced, human skin cells to increasing doses of a test chemical, to learn how damaged the cells are. The more damaged the cells, the more toxic the chemical.

Hilary Jones, Ethics Director at Lush, said: “As a company that has to test our products to bring them to market, we can’t think of a test that is more irrelevant than the LD50 test. It provides nothing that would give us confidence to evaluate how something reacts for our customers and we have never used it.

"Science and technology has changed in leaps and bounds since the days this test was regarded as ‘good science’ – so we are 100% behind a push to get this taken away from the regulatory framework."