Here are some alternatives which in many ways can actually be safer and more accurate for the consumers (and the animals):

Eytex
Produced by the National Testing Corp. in Palm Springs, California, Eytex is an in-vitro (test-tube) procedure that measures eye irritancy via a protein alteration system. A vegetable protein from the jack bean mimics the reaction of the cornea to an alien substance. This alternative is used by Avon instead of the cruel Draize eye irritancy test.

Skintex
An in-vitro method to assess skin irritancy that uses pumpkin rind to mimic the reaction of a foreign substance on human skin (both Eytex and Skintex can measure 5,000 different materials).

EpiPack
Produced by Clonetics in San Diego, California, the EpiPack uses cloned human tissue to test potentially harmful substances.

Neutral Red Bioassay
Developed at Rockefeller University and promoted by Clonetics, the Neutral Red Bioassay is cultured human cells that are used to compute the absorption of a water-soluble dye to measure relative toxicity.

Testskin
Produced by Organogenesis in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Testskin uses human skin grown in a sterile plastic bag and can be used for measuring irritancy, etc. (this method is used by Avon, Amway, and Estee Lauder).

TOPKAT
Produced by Health Design, Inc. in Rochester, New York, TOPKAT is a computer software program that measures toxicity, mutagenicity, carcinogenicity, and teratonogenicity (this method is used by the U.S. Army, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Food and Drug Administration).

Ames Test
Tests for carcinogenicity by mixing a test culture with Salmonella typhimurium and adding activating enzymes. It was able to detect 156 out of 174 (90%) animal carcinogens and 90 out of 100 (88%) non-carcinogenes.

Agarose Diffusion Method
Tests for toxicity of plastic and synthetic devices used in medical devices such as heart valves, artificial joints, and intravenous lines. Human cells and the test material are placed in a flask and are separated by a thin-layer of agarose (a derivative of seaweed agar). If the material tested is an irritant, an area of killed cells appears around the substance.

Today, in-vitro (meaning, literally, "in glass") as opposed to in-vivo (meaning "whole animal") has flourished because of advances in tissue culture techniques and other analytical methods.

The main disadvantages to animal tests, according to John Frazier and Alan Goldberg, of CAAT, are: "Animal discomfort and death, species-extrapolation problems, and excessive time and expense." Animal protection advocates stress that the main disadvantage is the inhumane treatment of animals in tests due, in part, to the fact that anesthesia for the alleviation of pain is often not administered. Scientists allege that using anesthesia will interfere with test results.

Progress toward the widespread use of alternatives to animal testing will continue to gain strength as awareness of, and support for, alternatives is made known. As consumers, we can make a difference in the lives of innocent animals by purchasing only products deemed "cruelty-free" and writing to the companies that still doanimal testing and letting them know why you will not purchase their products.

Mohandas K. Gandhi said it best in his autobiography "The Story of My Experiments": "To my mind the life of the lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of the lamb for the sake of the human body. I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man."