3 Terms About Animal Welfare in Beauty (And The Differences Between Them)

One of the most passionately- held ethics for many consumers of beauty products is one of animal welfare when it comes to both animal testing and usage of animal byproducts in formulation. It can sometimes be difficult to determine which companies may be in alignment with one's values, and this difficulty only heightens when many terms brands use to label their products regarding their standards of animal ethics are confused in marketing and are, therefore, misunderstood by consumers. Three of the most common--and frequently confused-- of these terms are cruelty-free, vegan, and Leaping Bunny Certified.

Cruelty- Free: At its most basic definition, this standard is given to the finished product, the thing that you have pulled out on the shelf , has not undergone any kind of animal testing—on rabbits, lab rats, or any other. This standard does not necessarily extend to and therefore cannot guarantee, that the individual ingredients were not necessarily tested on animal flesh. Many times, both things will be true, but cruelty-free status does not always have to extend to ingredients in order for the finished product to be cruelty-free or for the brand that makes the product to technically call themselves cruelty free. Cruelty-free status also does not guarantee that there won’t be any animal-derived ingredients within the product’s formula. It only tells us that the finished product has not been tested for safety or effectiveness using an animal as the test subject. Some companies do also guarantee that none of their ingredients used to make their products have been tested on animals either, but that is an extension of cruelty-free status and is not a requirement.

Vegan: This labeling has to do with product formula. This guarantees that there are no animal-derived ingredients: carmine (a red-toned pigment made from crushed beetles), milk, lanolin, beeswax, honey, etc, is present within the product, To be called vegan, a product can only be made with synthetics or plant-based ingredients. The vegan label is technically not a guarantee that the product is necessarily cruelty-free, although I personally have never seen a cosmetics product wearing an official vegan label that was also not declared cruelty-free.

Leaping Bunny Certified: Rounding out the animal welfare category, companies often frequently submit their products and manufacturing practices to be certified by the Leaping Bunny Program. The Leaping Bunny Program is an amalgamation of eight national animal ethics groups that have come together to form the Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics (CCIC) to create an internationally-recognized standard of animal ethics in consumer products, denoting all compliant product worldwide with the Leaping Bunny seal. Leaping Bunny certification on a product, or more accurately , a whole brand, must show and pledge that all their products and raw ingredients are cruelty-free, and companies certified by the Leaping Bunny Organization also agree to not sell to any territories or sellers which legally require animal testing. The most common example of this is mainland China. In mainland China, animal testing by a third-party (usually the Chinese government) is required on all imported cosmetics, and all cosmetics products, imported or not, could be subjected to post-market testing if there are customer complaints about a product so severe that it is deemed a threat to public safety. This is a very rare occurrence and no post-market animal testing has been performed in mainland China in over three years. It is likelier that the questionable products would just be recalled and pulled off the shelves before they would be subjected to expensive post-market tests. Yet, if any post-market testing would be ordered, they could still be performed on animals, though currently, many such laws in mainland China are undergoing revision to potentially reduce or eliminate animal usage in post-market testing going forward, favoring instead less expensive and inorganic ways of testing that could extend one day to also imported cosmetic items before they ever make it to Chinese shelves.

While Leaping Bunny Certification guarantees cruelty-free status on an international level, not all products and companies with the Leaping Bunny label are free of animal-derived ingredients. Some Leaping Bunny certified products use honey and beeswax. However, in order to gain Leaping Bunny Status, a company must fully disclosed from where and how those items are obtained and ensure that they will hold themselves and their suppliers to ethical and sustainable practices in obtaining those ingredients.

Whether you are actively seeking to make your beauty routine more animal-friendly in some way or if you were just simply curious to learn the differences between these terms frequently printed on product packaging, I hope this article was able to provide some help. Animal ethics is such an important topic for so many beauty lovers, and standards within the cosmetics industry and legal measures for animal welfare are constantly evolving. For continually updated information about animal ethics in beauty and beyond, I recommend checking out the Leaping Bunny website, Leapingbunny.org, Peta.org, and Humanesociety.org.