Animal testing is carried out across multiple industries, but the biggest users are pharmaceutical companies, chemical manufacturers, and cosmetics and personal care corporations. Private organizations outside of government and academia account for over 75% of laboratory animals used annually in the United States. The specific companies involved range from household names in your bathroom cabinet to global drug developers you’ve never heard of.
The Industries That Use the Most Animals
Pharmaceutical and biotech companies are the largest users of animal testing by a wide margin. Drug development relies on animal models to evaluate whether a new compound is safe enough to try in humans, and this process consumes millions of animals each year. The biotechnology industry alone purchases an estimated 11% of all laboratory rodents sold in the U.S., along with about 5% of swine and 2% of rabbits and dogs.
Chemical manufacturers test industrial and agricultural compounds on animals to meet safety regulations. Cosmetics and personal care companies do the same for ingredients in everything from shampoo to sunscreen. Federal government laboratories use roughly 1.6 million animals annually, which represents less than 10% of the national total. The rest comes from private industry, universities, and contract testing labs that perform tests on behalf of other companies.
Major Cosmetics and Personal Care Companies
A handful of giant corporations own most of the beauty and personal care brands you see in drugstores, and nearly all of them still engage in animal testing in some form. The parent companies most commonly identified include L’Oréal, Estée Lauder, Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Clorox, Colgate-Palmolive, Unilever, Henkel, Reckitt Benckiser, Church & Dwight, and S.C. Johnson.
The most common reason these companies test on animals is to sell products in markets where regulators require it. China has historically mandated animal testing on imported cosmetics, though recent reforms now allow some non-animal testing methods conducted within the country. Still, many multinational brands continue testing to maintain access to the Chinese market.
Household Product Companies
The same parent companies behind your cosmetics often make your cleaning supplies too. S.C. Johnson (Windex, Pledge, Glade), Reckitt Benckiser (Lysol, Finish, Air Wick), Procter & Gamble (Tide, Dawn, Febreze), Church & Dwight (OxiClean, Arm & Hammer), and Clorox all test on animals or fund testing through their supply chains. Colgate-Palmolive, known primarily for oral care and cleaning products, falls into the same category.
The “Cruelty-Free” Brand Problem
Here’s where it gets complicated. Many brands that market themselves as cruelty-free are owned by parent companies that still test on animals. Drunk Elephant is owned by Shiseido. NYX, Urban Decay, and IT Cosmetics belong to L’Oréal. Too Faced, Smashbox, and Aveda are Estée Lauder brands. Method, Mrs. Meyer’s, and Ecover are all owned by S.C. Johnson. Tom’s of Maine belongs to Colgate-Palmolive.
Unilever alone owns a long list of brands that individually claim cruelty-free status: Seventh Generation, Dermalogica, Tatcha, Murad, Hourglass, Shea Moisture, Schmidt’s Naturals, and Kate Somerville, among others. Coty owns both CoverGirl and a majority stake in Kylie Cosmetics. LVMH, through its subsidiary Kendo, owns KVD Vegan Beauty, Bite Beauty, Ole Henriksen, and Marc Jacobs Beauty.
Whether buying from these brands bothers you depends on where you draw the line. The individual brand may not test on animals, but your money flows up to a parent company that does.
How to Verify a Company’s Status
Labels like “cruelty-free” and “not tested on animals” are not regulated terms. A company can put a bunny logo on its packaging while its ingredient suppliers conduct animal tests, or while it contracts third-party labs to do testing on its behalf. The label might only refer to the finished product, even though nearly all animal testing happens at the ingredient level.
The Leaping Bunny certification is the most rigorous standard available. It requires that no new animal testing occur at any phase of product development, including by the company’s laboratories and ingredient suppliers. PETA also maintains cruelty-free lists, but the Leaping Bunny Program involves independent auditing of the entire supply chain, which makes it harder for companies to exploit loopholes.
Pharmaceutical and Medical Research
Drug development has historically required animal testing before any compound can be tried in humans, and this remains the largest single use of laboratory animals worldwide. The results, however, are far less predictive than most people assume. A large-scale analysis published in PLOS Biology found that only 5% of therapies tested in animals ultimately receive regulatory approval for human use. About half of animal-tested treatments ever make it to a human study at all, and 40% reach a randomized clinical trial.
The gap between animal results and human outcomes can be dramatic. In cancer research, animal experiments showed tumor regression rates of 80% to 100%, while the same therapies produced only 0% to 24% regression in human studies. There is an 86% overlap between positive results in animal and clinical studies, but that agreement often doesn’t hold up through the full approval process.
Regulatory Changes Underway
The landscape is shifting. The FDA announced a plan to reduce, refine, or potentially replace animal testing in the development of monoclonal antibody therapies and other drugs. The agency is now encouraging companies to include data from “New Approach Methodologies” in their applications. These include AI-based toxicity models, cell and tissue testing in lab settings, and organ-on-chip technology that mimics human organ function on a tiny scale.
Companies that submit strong safety data from non-animal methods may receive streamlined review as certain animal studies are eliminated. The FDA plans to launch a pilot program allowing select drug developers to use a primarily non-animal testing strategy. Other validated alternatives now recognized by the agency include engineered tissues, systems biology approaches that evaluate whole-organism responses from cell data, and testing on simpler organisms like zebrafish.
China’s cosmetics regulator has also begun accepting non-animal testing data generated within the country, which could eventually reduce the pressure on global brands to test on animals for market access. These changes are incremental, but they represent the first concrete steps toward ending mandatory animal testing in the two largest markets in the world.