TORONTO—AbbVie, the global pharmaceutical company behind Botox, has confirmed to Animal Justice that it’s stopped using animal-based testing for every batch of its anti-wrinkle products destined for consumers. This marks a huge victory for animals after years of Botox slipping through a loophole in Canada’s cosmetic testing ban to continue its cruel testing.
Canada banned cosmetics animal testing in late 2023, but injectable neurotoxins like Botox were exempted because they are classified as drugs rather than cosmetics. So despite the ban, every batch of Botox was able to be tested on multiple mice, using the extraordinarily cruel “LD50” test, in which animals are injected with a substance and experience progressive muscle paralysis and slow suffocation while fully conscious. until half of them die.. It’s shocking that this extreme cruelty continued even though Health Canada approved animal-free, cell-based alternatives for Botox batch testing in 2011 .
“While it is unacceptable that AbbVie dragged its heels in moving routine batch testing to an already approved humane alternative, the company’s confirmation that it has ended this practice is a meaningful step forward towards a cruelty-free future for cosmetic and pharmaceutical testing in Canada,” said Camille Labchuk, lawyer and executive director of Animal Justice.
AbbVie joins competitors Ipsen (Dysport) and Merz (Xeomin), which had previously confirmed to Animal Justice their shift to animal-free routine batch testing.
While the end of any cruel scientific practice is always welcome news, 3.7 million animals were used in Canadian laboratories in 2024 alone, an alarming 18.5 percent increase from the previous year. The federal government does not adequately regulate animal research, and Canada’s only national centre devoted to replacing animal testing with compassionate, and often cheaper, scientifically superior methods, recently closed due to lack of funding.
“It’s always a good thing when companies can transition away from cruel testing for products, but there’s a huge opportunity for Canada’s federal government to lead the shift by finally committing to sustained funding for animal-free science and by laying out a serious national roadmap to replace cruel experiments with more humane and human relevant science.
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