Before any new product is put on the market whether it is cosmetic, or potentially life saving medicine, the producers will want to make sure that is safe for humans to use. A common way of doing this is to test the product on animals.
Many people feel that this is unacceptable because it assumes that an animal life is less valuable than a human life. Opponents of animal testing point out that the animals involved often suffer great pain and fear, and argue that we have no right to do this to them for our own benefit.
On the other hand, it can not be denied that animal testing has helped scientists to make great discoveries in the field of medicine, providing effective drugs against cancer, heat disease and other potentially fatal illnesses. Supporters of animal testing argue that many lives has been saved this way. I would agree that there may be some benefits to using animals to test new medicines, although I would prefer such testing to be kept to a minimum. Increasingly, there are new ways of testing products, using cell cultures, which need not involved animals at all.
However, even when this is not possible, I cannot agree that it is necessary to test cosmetic products on animals. There are already myriad of cosmetic products on the market, with no need for future development and testing. Exploiting animals in this way is, in my opinion completely unacceptable.
In conclusion, I would not agree that testing products on animals is never acceptable, but it should be reserved for essential scientific work.