I came across this webby which lists companies that do and do not test on animals. I'm not going to pretend like I care and say that I'll stop buying from the companies that test on animals from now onwards cos it's like most major companies do test on animals. Like all the small brands/companies under the umbrellas of L'oreal, P&G, Unilever, Reckitt Benckiser, Sc Johnson, J&J. That's like majority of the products we use everyday!
Like cleaning agents Clorox, Febreeze, Easy-off;
bath products Palmolive, Pantene, Lux, Dove;
kitchen - Glad wraps;
mouth - Colgate, Listerine;
beauty products like Ralph Lauren, Maybelline, Ponds, L'oreal, Redken;
for babies - Pampers
and the list goes on.

http://search.caringconsumer.com/search.aspx

While I am an animal lover, I think it's really hard to stop animal testing totally. Companies need to make sure that products are safe for use before putting them out in the market. Obviously they will get into more trouble if a human being dies or gets really ill after using their products right. And to make sure they only sell safe products, they need to test it out on someone (or some animal) no?

I don't think my life is more precious than an animal but don't rats take shorter time to reproduce and hence more experiment subjects are available? Besides, I believe that most people will rather see tons of mutated rats than mutated human beings? Remember the issue about Japanese testing chemical weapons on POWs during WW2?

Chemical weapons test site fuels rage over Japanese wartime atrocities

Scientists find evidence of vast plant that used POWs as human guinea pigs in gas and biological warfare

Chinese scientists have found the site of a huge Second World War Japanese army chemical weapons testing facility. Located in the remote grasslands of Inner Mongolia, the site was used by the Japanese to test poison gas bombs from 1940 onwards. Chinese prisoners of war, captured during the 1937-45 Sino-Japanese War, are believed to have been used as human guinea pigs during the tests.

As many as 250,000 Chinese died between 1937 and 1945 as a result of being exposed to such weapons. More than 2,000 people have subsequently been killed and injured by chemical weapons that were hastily abandoned by the Japanese army at the end of the Second World War. Only two weeks ago, three people in the southern province of Guangdong were hospitalised after inhaling gas that had leaked from discarded artillery shells. Japanese authorities estimate there are 700,000 such weapons scattered around China; the Chinese put the number at two million.

more: independent.co.uk

No human guinea pigs!