Has the Hypocrisy ‘Dawned’ on You?
Have you seen Procter & Gamble’s (P&G) new commercial boasting that Dawn dishwashing liquid is gentle and effective enough to clean oil-covered birds and marine mammals? The company plans to donate $1 to the International Bird Rescue Research Center (IBRRC) and the Marine Mammal Center (MMC) each time someone buys a bottle of Dawn and “activates” the donation (up to $500,000).
This may sound nice, but I’m going to pass on P&G’s sales ploy and continue to purchase dish detergent from a cruelty-free company. P&G may be bragging about its efforts to help wildlife, but it’s not saying much about what it does to dogs, cats, and other animals in laboratory experiments.
P&G owns a slew of companies that aren’t exactly animal-friendly. PETA has been campaigning against Iams, for example, since 2003, when a PETA investigator went undercover at an Iams contract laboratory where researchers were conducting invasive tests on dogs and cats. Although Iams has made some progress since the investigation, it still keeps up to 700 dogs and cats in its Ohio laboratory for use in nutritional studies, and it continues to perform cruel experiments on mice and other animals.
Many of P&G’s other subsidiaries have also not yet pledged to permanently stop testing their products on animals, and since it’s hard to know exactly what’s going on behind closed laboratory doors, they may even still be conducting notoriously cruel product tests, including the infamous LD50 test and the dreadful Draize test.
Fortunately, there are humane and effective alternatives to animal tests, and many companies proudly manufacture cruelty-free products. I’d much rather buy products from a cruelty-free company and donate directly to the International Bird Rescue Research Center (IBRRC), the Marine Mammal Center (MMC), or another organization that helps animals—not hurts them.
I hope that you’ll do the same.
