Vegan Certification

Vegan Certification

Vegan certification highlights the importance your cosmetic brand places on animal well-being and allows you to share a wider message with your consumers regarding your brand’s ethics and values.

Among other elements, a vegan-certified cosmetic product is defined as containing no animal ingredients or by-products, using no animal ingredients or by-products in the manufacturing process and no testing on animals by any company or independent contractor.

As a reminder, European Cosmetics Regulation EC No 1223/2009 banned animal testing on cosmetic products in 2004 and on cosmetic ingredients in 2009 and 2013 (Article 18). Since the Common Criteria in EU No 655/2013 prohibit any marketing communications that would “convey the idea that a product has a specific benefit when this benefit is mere compliance with minimum legal requirements” (Legal Compliance criterion, §3), claiming that a product is “cruelty-free” is therefore illegal in the EU. As of today, there are not many ways of providing such information to the consumer without raising compliance issues. However, the claim “vegan” is an option since its definition encompasses non-animal testing, among other requirements.