‘Turn It Off!’ Victoria Smurfit, Greg O’Shea, and Other Irish Stars React to Animal Testing Video

‘Turn It Off!’ Victoria Smurfit, Greg O’Shea, and Other Irish Stars React to Animal Testing Video

Dublin – In a brand-new PETA UK video, model Thalia Heffernan; Love Island star and presenter Greg O’Shea; actors Emmett J Scanlan, Ferdia Shaw, and Victoria Smurfit; and blogger Holly White react with tears and outrage to video footage from inside European laboratories. The new video, available here, urges Irish people to sign a European citizens’ initiative (ECI) calling for a transition to animal-free science and the strengthening of the EU ban on cosmetics testing on animals. If the petition amasses 1 million verified signatures from EU citizens, the European Commission is obliged to push the initiative forward.

Despite setting a global precedent when it was first introduced, the EU’s ban on cosmetics testing is being undermined by new and unnecessary animal testing requirements for cosmetics ingredients under chemicals regulations – even though these ingredients have been safely used for years. Started by PETA entities around the world as well as Dove, The Body Shop, and more than 100 animal protection organisations, the ECI also calls for the transformation of EU chemicals regulations without the addition of new animal tests and for the establishment of a plan to end all experiments on animals.

“I didn’t realise they’re actually, like, nearly torturing these animals and breaking their spines, killing them and chopping their heads off,” says O’Shea in PETA UK’s video. “It’s just disgusting.”

Approximately 9 million mice, rats, fish, dogs, and other animals are used every year in cruel experiments and other procedures in the EU. The majority of the tests fail to predict reliable results in humans, yet experimenters restrain dogs, rabbits, and guinea pigs and deliberately apply potentially toxic chemicals to their shaved skin or force them down their throats, causing the animals to develop tumours, sustain burns, or go blind.

“It’s forceful tubing down necks, it’s removal of body parts, it’s no anaesthesia, it’s cruelty,” says Heffernan in the video.

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA’s website or follow the group on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Contact:

Sascha Camilli +44 (0) 20 7923 6244; [email protected]

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