The EU marketing ban on use of ingredients tested in acute animal studies after March 9,2009 and tested in repeated dose animal studies after March 13, 2013 is now in effect.This presents unique challenges to cosmetic safety assessors because fully validated in vitro alternatives are not available for all safety endpoints.At the same time companies doing business in China must provide safety data to satisfy "new to China" regulations for cosmetic ingredients.Thus, for a global company like Amway, whom tends to place products in multiple markets including EU and China, strategies that may be useful for meeting both requirements from EU and China are possible.The present article summarizes the methods used by Amway global safety group during the safety assessment of cosmetics.All of the methods are alternatives to animal testing, while at the same time, could effectively ensure the safety requirements of a product.For example, we would determine the acceptable exposure level of an ingredient by investigating its manufacturing process and its historical human exposure for food or medicine.We would also apply "read through" principle, which is adopted by chemical inventory safety initiatives like HPV, OECD SIDS, and EU Reach, to cosmetic ingredients to fill data gaps.Toxicity is determined by dose, applying threshold principles routinely used for food additives is warranted in some cases.In addition, in many cases the data mining strategies discussed in combination with in vitro alternatives and human clinical studies can adequately cover all safety endpoints with no new animal studies.