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High street cosmetics brand Lush has awarded £330,000 in funding to campaigners and scientists from 11 countries in support of their work to end animal testing.
The Lush prize, which is an annual fund launched in 2012, has provided more than £1.8 million to support animal-free testing and campaigns around the world.
Eureka
According to the brand, it is: “The idea of The Lush Prize was to reward a ‘eureka’ moment when a breakthrough is made that would mean the end of testing on animals for cosmetics saftey forever.”
It is a collaboration between Lush and research organisation Ethical Consumer, and is the largest prize fund for the complete replacement of animal experiments.
It funds projects working to end animal research in toxicology (chemical testing).
Eliminating animal testing
The Prize covers several key areas: science, training, public awareness, lobbying and young researchers.
Last
year new prize categories for young researchers in Asia and the Americas were added, thanks to funding from
Lush in North America, Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea.
These have again been included in the 2017
Lush Prize, and a total of 13 young scientists from Brazil, USA, China, Japan, Singapore, Australia, Germany,
Luxembourg and the UK will receive £10,000 each towards their projects.
Winners this year include:
The Human Toxicology Consortium Project – training scientists and regulators on Adverse Outcome
Pathways (which offer the potential to greatly improve prediction of health effects and end the use of animals
in safety testing)
AFABILITY – a French/UK initiative to replace the use of animal-derived antibodies, which use up to 1 million
animals a year in the EU
Te Protejo – a Chilean charity that promotes cruelty-free cosmetics
A Harvard University team developing a bioprinting platform for fabricating 3D human organ-on-a-chip
models.
High standards
Lush Prize spokesperson Craig Redmond, said: “This year nominations for the Lush Prize were received from 38 countries, by far the highest so far.
“Judges continue to be impressed with not only the high quality of science and campaign initiatives
happening globally to replace animal tests, but also the integrity of young researchers who want to
avoid using animals for both ethical and scientific reasons.
“We are delighted to once again be able
to support projects across the world, not only financially but by raising their profile and showing
governments, scientists and the public that we all need to co-operate to replace animal testing with
superior, human-relevant, alternatives.”
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