Bollywood actor Sunny Leone participated in an exclusive Instagram Live event with PETA India to talk about vegan fashion and cruelty-free make-up – two issues close to her heart – today.
At a time when minks are being massacred after contracting coronavirus and spreading a mutated version of it and as experts are warning that the exotic-skins industry can spread other diseases, Leone felt compelled to share why she opts for vegan fabrics and why the products in her make-up brand, Star Struck, will never be tested on animals.
“We live in a world with such amazing advances in vegan materials and options for everyone. There is no reason for anyone to support cruelty in any form. Synthetic leather, mock croc, and even faux fur are some of the many great options,” says Leone.
Star Struck uses PETA US’ Beauty Without Bunnies cruelty-free logo. Of this, Leone says, “Increasingly, consumers today want to be confident their purchases do not support harm to animals. PETA US’ cruelty-free logo helps Star Struck proudly show that we are firmly against caging, poisoning [and] killing animals in any tests.”
PETA India – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear” – notes that millions of foxes, minks, rabbits, and even dogs and cats are bludgeoned, electrocuted, and skinned alive each year for fur coats, collars, and cuffs. Lizards are cut apart with machetes, snakes are nailed to trees, and alligators and crocodiles are impaled with metal rods for exotic-skin accessories, while cows and buffaloes killed for leather in India are often hacked at with dull knives while they’re still conscious.
More than 3,000 companies around the world have banned all animal tests in favour of effective, modern, non-animal methods. In India, following efforts by PETA India, the testing of cosmetics or their components on animals was banned in 2014, as was the importation of animal-tested cosmetics. However, China still requires most companies that wish to sell cosmetics there to have their products tested on animals, and many brands still choose to subject animals to painful cosmetics tests in which substances are dripped into their eyes, smeared onto their shaved skin, sprayed in their faces, or forced down their throats. Because of the vast physiological differences between humans and the animals used in these tests, the results are often misleading.
With so many cruelty-free cosmetics and fashionable animal-free alternatives to animal skins, it’s easy to get a killer look without killing animals.
Please see the entire chat here.
