Roger Moore backs animal-cosmetics ban

Sir Roger Moore and Brigitte Bardot are the latest in a string of names to back a campaign to end the sale of products tested on animals.

Sir Roger Moore and Brigitte Bardot have become the latest starts to back a campaign against cosmetics tested on animals.

The screen legends join 89,000 people - including Ricky Gervais, Dame Judi Dench, Leona Lewis and Melanie C - in signing Humane Society International's CrueltyFree2013 petition to urge European Union (EU) politicians to keep a promise banning the sale of new cosmetics tested on animals.

In 2009, the EU banned animal testing in its own labs but it is still legal to sell products imported from other countries, and while they are due to be banned in March 2013, there has been speculation this will be delayed indefinitely.

Roger said: "It seems absurd to me that Europe still allows animal-tested cosmetics to be sold in its shops when such animal testing is itself quite rightly banned in its laboratories. If something is unethical, it is unethical full-stop regardless of where in the world it takes place. So I say to EU politicians, stop supporting cosmetics animal testing in other countries by selling these products. You promised to ban them, and a gentleman's word is his bond."

Brigitte added: "We do not have the right to poison then kill animals, sensitive beings, for some beauty creams. It is urgent to equip the European Union with reliable, modern and non-cruel research, by definitively abolishing animal testing which is a cruelty without name."