So I suspect in response to more and more people becoming aware of the changes to Animal Testing policy for many Personal Care companies, they are trying to get around it by giving vague statements that at face value lull their potential customers into believing they are not conducting these cruel tests. They use language like:

“Only where required by law” – I love that one. It means they are selling their products in a brick & mortar store in China which means they have to test by law. If they sold just on-line, they wouldn’t have to. But they are doing the money grab. The sad thing about this is that while many of these companies have a long and disgusting history of unnecessary, cruel animal testing, too many of them have a history of NOT testing on animals! And when they decided to expand into China they very quietly changed their policy. So unless you as a consumer actively checked their website, you wouldn’t know they went back on their prior policy. I know I thought I was virtuously using cruelty-free products. When I looked at the products in the grocery store and didn’t see the Leaping Bunny, PETA, or other identifier saying they didn’t test on animals or were cruelty free, I honestly thought it was because the industry as a whole was no longer testing on animals so taking up real estate on the bottle or box was unnecessary. BOY WAS I WRONG. So when you see this nice little “Only where required by law” on sites like Clinique (which I have used since I was in my 20s) or Estee Lauder, that means they are testing in order to sell in a store in China.

“The final product I not tested on animals” – wow. So all that means is that any number of components of the finished product were tested on animals. They could have tested each of the individual components on animals, combined them, and slapped that label on to try and make their customers feel better. I was sad to see that on one of my Rusk products this morning.

“We do not test on animals”. Be careful – that doesn’t mean they don’t pay an outside company to test for them!!! That is the ultimate sneaky in my opinion because until I did a lot of research, I thought these companies were ok! But not necessarily.

So, it is a lot of work. You may not want to go there. However, once you find some brands that ARE good, you can keep buying them and just check the Leaping Bunny, PETA, or other cruelty free websites that maintain lists.  You also have to consider if you are ok buying from a company that doesn’t test but is owned by a larger corporate entity that does. At this point I am ok with that. I am hopeful that my dollars spent with these companies will show their parent organizations that it is possible to do the right thing and still make money!

I am doing more research on some brands I use, but I was happy to find that Milani, Wet & Wild (yay my eyeliner is ok!!!), Burts Bees, Toms of Maine, and Paul Mitchell are a few that are supposed to be ok. So are Urban Decay and Bare Minerals.  So when you are considering where to spend your hard earned money, consider if you would be happy knowing that a poor rat or rabbit or cat or dog was subjected to cruel, invasive tests in order for you to have shinier hair or smell good.

Just because they are not MY pets doesn’t make it ok.