I grew up with a love for animals. Even my toys were related to animals. My dad built me a dollhouse, but instead of playing with dolls in the house, I had miniature animals living in it. As a child I wouldn’t eat meat because I associated the meat with the animal I was eating.
I took my love for animals a bit further when I turned 13 and came across the book Animal Liberation by Peter Singer. I discovered that not only do we eat animals, but we also hunt them, wear them, use them for entertainment and experiment on them.
After reading Singer’s book, I found myself overwhelmed and struggling to know how to make a difference. I decided to start with changing my own behaviors, and I immediately became a vegetarian. Additionally, I also started paying attention to the cosmetics I bought and made sure those companies did not experiment on animals. But I wanted to go a step further. I got a list of all the cosmetic companies that tested on animals and I sat down at a typewriter and wrote a letter to each of these companies asking them to stop testing on animals. I heard back from some of the companies, telling me that they were actively looking for alternatives to animal testing. While my 13 year-old-self was not able to convince the industry to completely abandon animal testing, several companies have adopted alternative methods that do not utilize animals. Sadly, however, 30 years later there are still cosmetic companies that do test on animals.