 |
| [PHOTO: ©PETA/Joseph Cultice] |
Los Angeles: Jane's Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro is putting a
face—and a body—to the hundreds of thousands of animals worldwide who are
poisoned, blinded, and killed every year in tests for the cosmetics industry.
In the edgy new PETA campaign, which was shot by top
celebrity photographer Joseph Cultice, a nude Navarro appears bleeding from his
eyes and from abraded patches of skin on his bare legs and torso next to the
words "Animal Testing Kills: Choose Cruelty-Free."
"They're not taking a bunny rabbit and putting mascara
on it. They're injecting a chemical directly into its eye to see what kind of
adverse reaction happens to it," Navarro stressed in an on-set PETA
interview. "In many cases, parts of their body are ripped open. They're
all alive, and they're all aware. It's torture for the animal, it's terrifying
and painful and probably one of the cruelest things done in the name of vanity."
According to PETA activists, “to test cosmetics, household
cleaners, and other consumer products, rats, mice, guinea pigs, rabbits, and
other animals are force-fed chemicals or have harsh substances dripped into
their eyes or rubbed onto their raw, abraded skin—even though the results of
animal tests are not applicable to humans.”
While these tests are
required in China and some other countries, they are not required by law in the
U.S. and have been banned in the European Union and Israel. Fortunately, many
companies—including LUSH, Urban Decay, Paul Mitchell Systems, The Body Shop,
Seventh Generation, and more—have signed PETA's statement of assurance that
they use only modern, non-animal methods to test their products and
ingredients.
This is Navarro's
second ad campaign with PETA. He first posed in PETA's famous "Ink, Not
Mink" series, in which he bared all but his tattoos to protest the cruel
fur industry.