So right now, we're outside the Lush Regent Street shop
and we have just witnessed some pretty brutal
animal tests being enacted on a human test subject.
A young girl called Nicole, three years
old, a vegan and a performance artist.
This is an issue that she cares massively about
and I think there's still worse to come.
So at the moment, we're only at 11.30 am.
This series of animal tests is going to last all day.
It's an endurance performance.
The objective of Lush is to take animals out
of cosmetics testing first in the EU, and then
we want to see that across the world.
So many people really don't realise that animal testing in
laboratories is going on for the cosmetics industry and that
they are killing millions of animals a year.
It's a completely frivolous use
and also it's very unreliable the data that you get anyway
The cosmetics directive is a really
positive piece of legislation for animals.
It was passed in 1993 at the request of 20 years
of campaigning by the public in Britain and across Europe.
And it said that no animals
could be tested on for cosmetics.
But unfortunately, the cosmetics industry lobbied behind
the scenes after the legislation got passed
and they were granted a delay, then
another delay, then another delay.
And so far it's been 20 years and
they're currently asking for another ten years.
So what we're doing today and what we've been doing
in our shops for the last week is get petitions
signed so that our customers can put their signatures to
something that tells the EU Parliament enough is enough.
30 years is a ridiculous amount of time.
Very soon, there's going to be a decision as
to whether to grant that extra ten year delay.
And we say that cosmetics don't
need to be tested on animals.
Lush has never done it and there's no
damn reason for anyone else to do it.
And we're really angry.
A lot more shocking than I anticipated.
I think we kind of knew what was going
to happen, but actually seeing it in the flesh,
in a respect, is always takes you back.
But it reiterates why we're doing what we're doing.
At the end of the day, we're seeing buses come past
and people are watching and looking with complete shock in their
eyes and trying to find out what's going on.
And then you tell them, and there is just so much
sympathy and empathy and hope and desire to kind of sign
that petition and a real desire to see this practice end.
This is our first ever global campaign.
So in over 800 shops in 49 countries,
people are running the fighting animal testing campaign,
still fighting animal testing!
The fact that this is one of our first
campaigns, that we're all doing exactly the same time
makes it so much more significant and so much
more powerful than anything we've ever done before.
Someone pointed out to me, if this were an animal
in our window that we were doing this to
we'd have the police down, we'd have the RSPCA down, we'd
have all of the animal rights groups up in arms.
But the fact that this is something that
goes on daily in laboratories across the world
without that sort of protest is really telling.
We've just finished the performance in Regent Street
with the animal test subject being killed and
then taken out to the bins and this
is the reality for millions of laboratory animals.
This is how it ends for them.
So if you really care about animal testing
please go down to your local Lush shop.
Sign the petition, ask them how you
can get involved in the fighting animal testing
campaign because together we really can put a
stop to animal testing for the cosmetics industry.