What Does Cruelty-Free Beauty Mean?

Cruelty-free Beauty refers to the movement that seeks to encourage companies and governments to stop experimental animal testing. Not just for finished products but any part of the production process of a product. That includes third parties and suppliers as well.

A truly cruelty-free brand does not perform any animal testing on products or ingredients at any point during the making of their products. They also ensure that their suppliers don’t test on animals and that no third parties test on animals on their behalf. The brand may not test on animals where required by law.

The industries most exposed to this subject are beauty, fashion, personal hygiene, and cleaning products. If a living animal experiences pain in the name of manufacturing something, suffers, or has permanent damage, it usually ends up being killed at the end of the test. For this reason, many consumers turn against brands that still participate in these practices.

Warning: Terms Are Not Regulated (Yet)

For some reason, brands can easily throw terms like “cruelty-free,” “clean,” “vegan,” and “non-toxic” around but these terms are not regulated by the FDA, meaning any company can claim to be “cruelty-free” or any of the above terms, regardless of their (animal testing) policies. This means blatantly trusting the brand promises isn’t the way to go cruelty-free/vegan/clean anymore.

How Does Conscious Bunny Define “Cruelty-Free”?

Since there’s currently no legal definition of the term “cruelty-free,” it can mean different things to different people. When I use “cruelty-free,” I mean that a brand is not testing their finished products or ingredients on animals (neither themselves nor third parties that test for them), does not use any ingredients that have been tested on animals, brand’s suppliers don’t test finished products or ingredients on animals and does not test on animals when required by law.

How Do You Recognize Cruelty-Free Brands?

Three cruelty-free organizations certify brands as cruelty-free. Leaping Bunny (Cruelty-Free International) and PETA are the only official bunny logos that certify brands. If you see one of these logos, the brand is officially cruelty-free. However, some brands slap a fake bunny logo on their products while they may not be (completely) cruelty-free. You have to be really careful! Check out this article to learn more about cruelty-free organizations and their logos.

Also, know that a brand can be cruelty-free without being certified. Brands do not have to get a cruelty-free certification, and they can still be cruelty-free. This requires research of your own or browsing sites like Conscious Bunny to find out if a brand is really cruelty-free.

The Differences Between Vegan And Cruelty-Free

The terms vegan and cruelty-free have different meanings, so they are not the same and can’t be used interchangeably. It is possible that a product is cruelty-free and not vegan or the other way around, vegan and not cruelty-free.

When the product indicates that it is vegan, it means that it does not contain ingredients of animal origin or derivatives thereof. For example, it does not feature collagen, wax, milk, carmine, glycerin, squalene, lanoline, and biotin that are extracted from animals.

When you meet a product that is marked as cruelty-free, it means that the product is not been tested on animals, but it can have ingredients that are not vegan.

• Cruelty-Free: Not tested on animals.
• Vegan: Does not contain animal-derived ingredients.

So, are there any products that are both? Yes. Thankfully, in recent years, several cosmetics brands have been launched that commit to being cruelty-free and vegan, often in addition to being free of parabens, sulfates, or more (which we call “clean”), considered harmful ingredients.

Some of the most common components of animal cosmetics are honey or beeswax, lanolin from wool fat, carmine made from insects such as shredded cochineal, squalene that can come from shark liver oil, dairy products, the gelatin of the tendons or ligaments of the cow or pig, biotin, and also some forms of hyaluronic acid, glycerin, and retinol.

Vegan products are those that do not contain animal-derived ingredients in their formulation and in their results. I’m happy to say that nowadays, many companies have dedicated themselves to reformulating their products from scratch. An example is Kylie Cosmetics, which was rebranded into a completely cruelty-free, vegan, and clean brand.

But please be aware that if a product is listed as vegan and/or clean, it does not automatically mean it has not been tested on animals during manufacture. To recap, if a product is vegan or clean, it does NOT guarantee that it is also cruelty-free.