LUSH Grants $445,000 to End Animal Testing

The international beauty brand awarded young scientists, activists, and global organizations substantial sums to make vivisection a thing of the past.


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During the 2017 Lush Prize event held last weekend in London, vegan-friendly beauty brand LUSH awarded $445,000 to companies and individuals actively working to end animal testing. The Lush Prize is changing the complex system of testing chemicals for safety by helping to fund new technologies that do not rely on animal-based models. Winners were selected from a shortlist of 66 entrants from 29 countries in five categories, including lobbying, training, public awareness, young researchers, and science. Engineer Jennifer Lewis won the notable science prize for her work in creating “organ-on-a-chip”—a technology that uses tissues grown from human cells for toxicology testing. Training prize winner the Human Toxicology Project Consortium—funded by The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS)—was honored for its work to promote training programs that use software in lieu of animal chemical safety tests. Troy Seidle, senior director of research and toxicology at Humane Society International (an affiliate of HSUS), believes that testing chemicals on animals is an outdated practice that does not produce human-relevant results—as toxicology tests on mice cannot be replicated on rats. “In 20 years or less,” Seidle told VegNews, “animal toxicology testing will be in the past.”