Pageant sponsors cruelty to animals

Letter to the Editor

Reader alleges Lamar Cosmetics is cruel to animals

Dear Editor:

While I don't have the money to buy advertising space in your newspaper or sponsor frivolous beauty pageants, I can sleep with a clean conscience. Can Allie Lamar? Can the city of Oxford?

This new beauty pageant is being sponsored by a company that practices cruelty to animals in testing labs on a daily basis. What does that say about our community? Do the good citizens of Yoknapatawpha County want to be known for our rich literary traditions or our support of animal abuse?

The animals being tortured in the name of product safety cannot speak for themselves, and that is why I am writing you this letter.

Neither the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) nor the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) requires cosmetic companies to test either their ingredients or their finished products on animals. Yet, millions of animals are still lost to these tests every single year, according to the National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAS). Who knows how many of those animals are killed here in Oxford?

Studies have shown that animal testing protects companies, not consumers. Not one person who has ever purchased cosmetics manufactured by Lamar Cosmetics has benefited from the inhumane tests conducted by that company under the guise of public safety.

Are there alternatives to animal testing? Yes.

For starters, Lamar Cosmetics could easily scrap their "need" for animal testing by simply taking advantage of the Cosmetic Ingredient Review (CIR), a program supported by the Cosmetic, Toiletry, and Fragrance Association (CTFA). Beyond that, Lamar Cosmetics could use any of several cruelty-free testing procedures suggested by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

Lamar Cosmetics does not need to test its products on animals, and we should not promote Lamar Cosmetics until they accept that truth and change their practices.

On behalf of all innocent animals, I call upon my fellow caring citizens to boycott the Yoknapatawpha County Literature Festival Pageant and stop buying Lamar Cosmetics while the company continues to promise beauty but deliver pain.

If Lamar cannot hear the voices of animals in pain, then perhaps the company needs to feel pain until they change their ways.

Wendy Kullman
Oxford