Question about cosmetic and pharmaceutical companies?

No, not all companies do their own research.

I used to work for a company which made both cosmetic and pharmaceutical products, and once upon a time - certainly in the pharmaceutical arm - they DID do their own research. They discovered new compounds, tested them, and eventually marketed them as full-blown products.

The entire process is phenomenally expensive for pharmaceuticals, because you're dealing with peoples' lives, and if you get it wrong people can die. Indirectly, that's what happened to the company I worked for. They discovered a new drug which was good for people with congestive heart failure, but in the later stages of the trials it was apparent that more people were dying who were taking the drug than were doing so in the control group who weren't taking it. It was only a small statistical difference, but it was enough for them to pull the plug on it. The amount of money they'd spent was all wasted.

Only early stage trials exclusively involved animals. Later on in all such trials, it is essential that they be carried out on human subjects because there is no authority in the world that would approve something which hadn't undergone such tests. At best, in vitro tests only reduce the number of animals required - they cannot yet eliminate animal trials altogether, because some effects which have to be quantified involve a physical reaction to some stimulus (i.e. reaction to pain or discomfort).

Cosmetics is a different ballgame. There are many companies who conduct their own research, but this does not have to be anywhere near as thorough as it does with medicines (so it is much cheaper). It might just amount to trying a new product on a small group of volunteers using things like the "patch test", which checks for allergic reactions, or a control group testing the product. In some countries it is still a legal requirement for animal tests to have been conducted (the USA is a good example) - even on some cosmetics.

Animal testing IS banned on cosmetics in the EU. But imports may well have been tested by that route. However, if something makes any quasi-medical claim then it still has to be animal-tested (certainly in the UK).

There's more info below (warning: it might be upsetting)