L’Oréal has unveiled its plans to fight against the testing on animals and teamed up with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Photo: the tests on animals will be banned in Europe by 2013, from Getty Images

The cosmetics company donates $1.2 million to EPA for research on which ingredients are used in experiments. The main goal of both companies is to find out the way to test using The ToxCast tool for potential human toxicity, despite of the fact that the chemical testing is more expensive than animal testing.

“The urgent need for more efficient and relevant methods of safety testing is underscored by the tens of thousands of inadequately assessed chemicals in the environment,” chief scientific officer of the Humane Society of the United States and president and chief executive officer of the Humane Society International Andrew Rowan said in an interview to Ecouterre.

Today, the tests on animals being performed in order to create a new lipstick or cream, cause animals like rabbits or mice to suffer. For example, the rabbits undergo painful eye-dropping tests. Unable to move, the animals are struggling to get out of a contraption but only break their necks.

L’Oreal states that they have not tested the safety of their products on animals in 30 years. With the help of the ToxCast tool, the cosmetics giant will try to quickly calculate the safety of their cosmetics. The announcement of  L’Oreal’s strategy comes after the new regulations in Europe. Now, the European Union is in the process of monitoring of the cosmetics with ingredients that have been tested on animals. Such cosmetics will be completely prohibited by April 2013.

Last month, the company announced super-model Natasha Poly as its new international spokeswoman.