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| HSUS infographic |
Would you like your
creamy smooth lipstick quite as much if you knew the chemicals in it were
tested on live animals? How about your
special shampoo: Does a live animal’s suffering to test its chemical ingredients
make it or you feel extra special? And
your deodorant may make you feel safer – but not the animals involved in
testing its efficacy. . . .
“For
decades, animals have been used in painful, harmful testing that has determined
the safety of chemicals used in cosmetics. New techniques by which to test cosmetics,
however, like conducting tests on synthetic material that mimics human skin and
using advanced computer modeling are available to us today.” –from the testimony of Anthony Verrelli
(D-15), a primary sponsor of New Jersey’s “Humane Cosmetics Act.”
And
according to the Humane Society of the US, “There
are thousands of existing ingredients with a history of safe use, which allow
cosmetics companies to create innovative products without the need for new
animal testing. For new ingredients,
non-animal test methods exist.”
What are we waiting
for? Just one thing: Governor Murphy
signing the bill into law. It’s been on
his desk since easily moving through the legislature. Maybe he’s waiting to hear from . . . YOU, urging
him to sign it. Just think: if enacted,
the law would prevent the sale of cosmetics that have been newly tested on
animals!
Your
course is clear: Please contact Governor Murphy – now! Ask him to sign S1726/A795, the New Jersey
Humane Cosmetics Act, into law. Tweet: @GovMurphy
or e-mail: constituent. relations@NJ.Gov.
Early-summer sightings
They may be a bane to gardeners, but
I’m always happy to see groundhogs, especially the chubby babies, at the edge
of a nearby park. Lots of them right
now.
Fawns too, unfortunately. The other day, three sweet, spotted and
so-vulnerable babies under a highway bridge looked to be moving tentatively
toward the grassy hill nearby and away from the traffic. I could only hope.
As of June 29, fireflies, aka
“lightning bugs,” reappeared after dusk.
And a ladybug who had made it inside was transported to an outdoor
garden (“fly away home!”).
What are you seeing?
‘What the world needs
now. . .’
In How to Love Animals:
In a Human-shaped World, author Harry Mance
explores what people living in our destructive Anthropocene Era can do to help —
and hopefully save — the animals of the Earth. Early on, he observes that loving animals is
“one of western society’s core values,” yet the thoughtless, often
inhumane ways that people treat animals go against this principle and
“rational thinking.”
Drawing on research and interviews, Mance (chief
features writer for the Financial Times) brings to light the many
contradictions in the human-animal relationship and offers insights into how people
can protect an animal kingdom in crisis. A former meat-eater turned vegan, he has witnessed,
and questioned, the taking of animal lives for human consumption, and investigated
alternatives to meat.
With high awareness of climate change and the
ecological disaster it foretells for all terrestrial life, Mance’s book aims
to foster greater sensitivity toward the animal world as a whole and to
recognize the Earth as more than just a “human-shaped”
space.
Enough
by Robin
ChapmanThere is always enough.
My old cat of long years, who
stayed
all the months of his dying,though, made sick by food,
he refused to eat, till,
long-stroked,
he
turned again to acceptanother piece of dry catfood
or spoonful of meat, a little water,
another
day through whichhe purred, small engine
losing heat—I made him nests
of
pillow and blanket, a curve of bodywhere he curled against my legs,
and when the time came, he slipped
out
a
loose door into the cold worldwhose abundance included
the
death of his choosing.
(“Enough” by Robin Chapman, from Abundance.
© Cider Press, 2009. Reprinted with permission in The Writer’s Almanac
for July 20, 2014.)
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