Miss America Contestant Protests Animal Testing

Bindhu Pamarthi, winner of 2013’s Miss DC contest and a participant in this year’s Miss America pageant, showed her penchant for compassion when she signed the Humane Society of the United States’ Be Cruelty-Free pledge, which is part of a nationwide campaign to end animal testing by the cosmetics industry in the United States. The inhumane practice has already been outlawed in countries throughout the world, including Israel, India, and the European Union. “I don’t believe that animals should suffer for the sake of physical beauty,” says Pamarthi on the HSUS website. “I want to work with the industry from the inside and leave a cruelty-free legacy with the Miss America Pageant.”