Artist Force-Fed, Injected at Cosmetics Store in Protest Against Animal Testing

Flagship cosmetics store in London goes to extreme with window display

A 24-year-old woman was restrained and tormented in the store window display of a flagship cosmetics store in London on Tuesday to highlight the abuses of common animal testing practices.

Thousands of shocked and horrified shoppers stopped in front of the all-natural cosmetics franchise Lush in Regent Street and snapped photos of the woman being force-fed, tied up and injected, the U.K. Daily Mail reported.

Dressed in nothing but a nude-colored body suit, Jacqueline Traide volunteered to put herself through the public torment for 10 hours straight in an effort to raise awareness for a campaign highlighting the pain and cruelty inflicted on animals during laboratory tests for the cosmetics industry.

Traide’s abuses included having her mouth clamped open, her eyes irritated with a spray, a portion of her hair shaved off and her skin braised by a man dressed as a lab technician.

Humane Society International and Lush Cosmetics, a store that heavily promotes its selection of all-natural and organic handmade products, joined forces in an effort to launch a global campaign to end animal testing for cosmetics, the Daily Mail reported.

“The ironic thing is that if it was a beagle in the window and we were doing all these things to it, we’d have the police and (animal welfare group) RSPCA here in minutes,” Lush campaign manager Tamsin Omond told the Daily Mail. “But somewhere in the world, this kind of thing is happening to an animal every few seconds on average.”

The campaign, “Fighting Animal Testing,” is being carried out in over 700 Lush shops across 47 countries including the United States, Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Russia.

While the London Lush store appears to have been the only one so far to feature a human demonstration in a window display, most stores are participating in the campaign by gathering signatures for a petition, a Lush employee in the U.S told NBC.

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