In a huge win for animals, Smarter Sorting was developed and uses artificial intelligence to tell whether a product is toxic to aquatic animals without the need to use animals for testing.

Source: PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals)/Youtube

Animal testing is an extremely outdated practice that causes so many unnecessary animal deaths and suffering. Many of the products that we use are toxic to aquatic life, and when they get into our waterways, they can pose a serious threat to wildlife. To prevent this, companies test whether their products are toxic to aquatic life and often put a certain amount into a fish tank to see how many of them die.

Animal testing like this has been happening for decades, and we have an immense amount of data on the toxic limit of many chemicals and ingredients. Smarter sorting, the winner of the Fast Company’s 2022 Word Changing Ideas Awards, uses the huge amount of data and can conduct accurate toxicity tests without killing any animals.

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“Most ingredients used in consumer products have toxicity data that goes back decades,” says AJ Kenny, a regulatory expert with the company, told Fast Company. “So we have all this great data that exists at the ingredient level, so you would plug these into formulas based on estimates of, okay, this ingredient makes up 10% of the overall product.”

Smarter Sorting uses testing data from state websites and finds the median level for a certain ingredient. Then, through some calculations, it can create an analysis that mimics an animal toxicity test.

States like Washington and Minnesota already accept these ways of testing, and Smarter Sorting is introducing a bill to the California House that would allow computational toxicology instead of animal testing. Animal testing is not necessary, and companies like this are helping us move away from these cruel practices. Sign this petition to end forced taxpayer funding for painful animal experiments

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• NIH Funds Animal Testing Overseas, Per Report
• 10 Groundbreaking Alternatives to Animal Testing
• Maryland Votes to Ban Animal Testing

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