Extreme Anti-Animal Testing Stunt: Woman Treated Like Test Subject in Store Window

A cosmetics store in the United Kingdom has taken an extreme approach to showing just how vehemently opposed it is to animal testing -- it's depicting some of the procedures on a pained looking woman in one of its store windows.

The Daily Mail reports the woman is artist Jacqueline Traide who volunteered to help cosmetics company Lush in a protest against animal testing. Clad in a nude leotard with her mouth forcibly held open by a metal device, Traide was force fed, subjected to eye irritants, and given injections. Here's more on the scene:

They dragged her along with a rope around her neck and pushed her down on a bench.

It was feeding time for Jacqueline Traide and you could tell from the look on her face she was terrified.

First, they stretched her mouth open with two metal hooks attached to a strap around her head.  The man in the white coat grabbed hold of her ponytail and tugged it until she tilted backwards.

By the time he had finished spooning food down her throat, she was choking, gagging and trying to break free.

For the next ten hours, this attractive, 24-year-old artist was given injections, had her skin abraded and smothered in lotions and potions – then endured having a strip of her hair shaved off in front of stunned onlookers in one of Britain’s busiest streets.

Lush sells handmade cosmetics and has from its founding in the 1990s been against animal testing. Starting off in the U.K., the store can now be found in more than 40 countries.

As for its latest marketing stunt, The Ecologist reports it was timed to coincide with World Day for Laboratory Animals. Here's what the company's Ethics Director Hilary Jones told the Ecologist about the real-life ad:

"It’s World Day for Laboratory Animals today so it seemed the ideal day to give up a shop front, and show what is happening to animals every day for cosmetics. [...] "We worked hard, got the legislation passed, and we all thought animal testing was a thing of the past but quietly in the background that legislation has never been fully enacted. Quietly in the background the big cosmetic companies have lobbied for it to be delayed, and it’s been delayed and delayed. It’s 20 years later and the legislation still isn’t fully enforced."

"Lush has had a no animal testing policy from the moment we set up the business. As industry insiders we find it inexcusable for companies to claim they need a delay, we’ve built a successful business around the world, there is no need for animal testing and we are living proof of that."

Onlookers were reported as finding the scene "shocking." Adrian Jones told The Ecologist this was "a really good way to show what animal testing actually involves."

Here is a clip taken by a bystander of the display:

Teaming up with Humane Society International, Lush is seeking to get 140,000 signatures on its petition to end animal testing in the cosmetics industry.

International Business Times reported Traide is a student at Oxford Brookes University who volunteered to participate in this dramatic exhibition. IBT states animal testing was outlawed in European countries a few years ago but the protest is against the many countries in which it is still legal.