In just one week, the EU’s sweeping ban on animal testing for cosmetics and personal care products goes into effect.

"All personal care products, from high-end to drugstore brands, will be subject to the rules," and "final products cannot be tested on animals and nor can any of a given products’ ingredients."

The European ban starting March 11th is a hard-won victory impacting companies and brands worldwide, and follows two decades of campaigning by organizations such as PETA, public protests, phone calls, and more than 20,000 e-mails.

“It’s enormously important because it started out as an ethical stand—animals should not die for shampoo—and brought about a whole new era of non-animal science,” Kathy Guillermo, SVP Laboratory Investigations at PETA, told brandchannel. “This ban shows that once an animal test is rejected, scientists can and will come up with a new and better way. We need to put the same limitations on household chemicals, pharmaceuticals and medical devices.”Continue reading...

A tough-to-watch, controversy-stirring videotaped event by Lush Cosmetics in the U.K. involved a performance artist undergoing animal laboratory tests in the window of Lush Regent Street London in April to raise awareness of their fight against animal testing in cosmetics.

Jacqueline Traides, 24, spent ten hours in the store window and was subjected to force-feeding, injections, hair shaving and other extreme discomfort while restrained. She later blogged, "It was somewhere after the fourth hour of this live act that I found my self asking the question ‘why exactly am i here?’. I realised then that it was not to Lush, nor to the onlookers but to the beings, animals and humans alike, that endure such suffering without choice."

Intended to shock, thousands of passerby signed the brand's petition on the spot, while the performance was also streamed live on a website where viewers could sign. "I hope it will plant the seed of a new awareness in people to really start thinking about what they go out and buy and what goes into producing it," said Traides.Continue reading...

Fast-food brands aren't going to get out of the meat business any time soon. But Burger King wants to be the first big U.S. fast-food chain to at least do that with chicken and pigs that don’t spend their lives caged up.

The plan is for the 7,200 Burger Kings across America to be using 100 percent cage-free eggs by 2017 and also only buy pork from “suppliers that can demonstrate documented plans to end their use of gestation crates for breeding pigs,” according to a press release. 

The animal welfare announcement comes as the chain is promoting the chicken strips on its new U.S. menu in a celeb-laden (now adding Steven Tyler? Update: yes, Tyler) advertising campaign.Continue reading...

America loves a winner with a redemption story. Well, at least marketers think they do. That would explain how Philadelphia Eagles star quarterback Michael Vick, who spent nearly two years in prison for his part in an interstate dog-fighting ring, has managed to get another endorsement deal.

His hometown Philadelphia Inquirer reports that Vick, treated like a complete pariah when he was released from jail two years ago, has added to his post-prison endorsement deals by signing a new contract this week with a nutritional-supplement company, Fuse Science.

As part of the deal, the parent company of Fuse, Double Eagle Holdings Ltd., has a new equity partner. You guessed it: Vick.

"He's a changed man," Fuse Science CEO Adam Adler told the Associated Press.Continue reading...

Shelter cats and dogs have a branding problem. Can loathing for financial arch-villain Bernard Madoff help fix it?

While animal welfare organizations and pet products manufacturers promote shelter adoption, sad images of animals in cages depict shelters as holding areas for undesirable pets. Not exactly the best branding strategy.

To dispel this depressing public image, a new campaign called The Shelter Pet Project aims to rebrand shelters by giving shelter animals a voice—a human voice.Continue reading...