As you may or may not know, a few weeks ago I upped to anti with my animal loving-ness, and decided to go cruelty free with my beauty products. This is just my personal choice, and by no means am I going to harp on about it.
However, a fair few readers have mentioned they weren't aware so many beauty products were still tested on animals. To be honest, neither was I. Then I started doing the research, and it got a bit scary to be honest. There's alot of information out there and it can be hard to tell whether products are cruelty free or not. For example, Australian cruelty free accreditors Choose Cruelty Free will not accredit any company whose parent company tests on animals. Ergo, The Body Shop is not accredited by CCF as they are owned by L'Oreal, who still test on animals. This is where we need to cross-check with PETA, who do accredit The Body Shop, as they know that companies within the L'Oreal group pay for their own product development. You can find the full accreditation criteria for CCF here and Peta's criteria here (scroll to the bottom in FAQ).
Labelling can also be confusing, "Not Tested On Animals", "This finished product was not tested on animals", "Against animal testing" are all things that you may see on labels, and yet it's hard to tell if they really do or no not test. A good thing to look for is the CCF bunny logo, or PETA also have a bunny logo. It's a good thing to acquaint yourself with the brands that DON'T test so you know which ones to pick up from the drugstore.
I've compiled a small list of brands who DO NOT TEST on animals, however do check both CCF and PETA websites if you're not sure. This list is NOT exhaustive, just some well known cruelty free brands.
Almay
Australia
Bath and Body Works
ELF
Lush
Essence
Face of Australia
Jack Black
Kosmea
EOS
Weleda
Huzzaw
Lanolips
NYX
Organix
Palmers
Philosophy
Revlon
St Ives
Stila
Tarte
The Body Shop
Too Faced
Wet n Wild
EDIT: You can find an international list of cruelty-free brands here (thanks to Jen from My Beauty Bunny for the list and link! x)
This is just some general information, as I said, it's just for those who were curious :)
