In March, the Advocate-General of the European Court of Justice rejected an appeal by France to overturn a planned Europe-wide ban on cosmetics testing with animals that is scheduled to take effect in 2009.
France is home to a large cosmetics industry and claims that the ban would violate international trade agreements since it not only bans cosmetics testing on animals within the European Union, but also bans the import of cosmetics from outside the European Union that have been tested on animals.
France will appeal further and a final decision one way or another isn’t expected until later this year.
According to the Press Association, about 38,000 animals are used annually in cosmetics-related testing.
Source:
French challenge to animal cosmetics test ban fails. Geoff Meade, Press Association, March 17, 2005.