Vegan products will be cruelty free right?
This is a trap I’d fallen into repeatedly and unwittingly for quite a while. Merrily sauntering round the supermarket, seeing a vegan logo and assuming it’s cruelty free. It’s possibly not.
Essentially, the answer the question is no… a vegan label doesn’t mean a product is cruelty free. You’d think it would, but sadly it doesn’t. And the opposite is true, a product that has been certified as cruelty free isn’t necessarily vegan.
What’s the difference between vegan and cruelty free?
What does vegan mean?
A vegan product will mean that it contains no animal or animal-derived ingredients,. This includes ingredients such as honey, beeswax, lanolin (wool grease), silk and carmine (crushed beetles). A product may be vegan but it doesn’t mean that the ingredients it contains haven’t been tested on animals.
What does cruelty free mean?
Cruelty free certification means that neither the finished product nor any of its ingredients, have been tested on animals at any point. However, the ingredients themselves may have come from animals, which means the product isn’t vegan.
Cruelty free certification also means that the company hasn’t funded animal testing on its behalf. Some companies will use suppliers that have carried out animal testing on specific ingredients or they may sell their products in countries where animal testing is required by law. If a company sells their products in China, it is almost certain that they will have been tested on animals as this is required by law.
To be certified as cruelty free, companies must have a detailed knowledge of their suppliers and any third-party groups they work. This is to ensure that their entire manufacturing and production processes don’t involve animal testing of any kind. Be mindful that some companies will make bold statements claiming to be completely against animal testing of any kind “unless there is no suitable alternative” or “unless it is required by law”. But more often than not, this means they are selling their products in China. Or they are using animal testing because the law doesn’t tell them they have to use an alternative. Brands want you to think it’s out of their control and there’s nothing they can do about it, but that’s just not true.
How can you check for cruelty free brands?
Products are certified as cruelty free by either Cruelty Free International or PETA. Each has a different logo and each has different criteria for certification. We’ve outlined what these differences are and highlighted what to look for when you’re shopping.
There are two organisations that we consider a ‘go to’ for quickly and reliably checking if brands are cruelty free:
Cruelty Free International’s Leaping Bunny Programme and Cruelty Free Kitty.
Both websites are excellent sources of information and they are updated on a regular basis. You can check if a brand is vegan and cruelty free in just a few seconds and you can also find out if a brand is owned by a parent company that is cruelty free.
At Animal-Kind, we believe that cruelty free has to mean vegan too – no animal ingredients and no animal testing. All of our products are both vegan and cruelty free so you can shop with confidence knowing that we’ve carried out rigorous research to make sure products are completely animal friendly.
