What is the difference between cruelty-free and vegan?
Have you believed that cruelty-free and vegan are synonyms for a long time? Time to break that myth. These are two different terms and for someone who is finicky about not using animal products or animal-tested products, you must know what these terms mean to read the fine lines of brands better. Let’s dive right in!
1.What is the difference between cruelty-free and vegan?
Unfortunately, the terms cruelty-free and vegan are way different than a consumer can imagine. So a product can be either of it or both of it but they’re not dependent on each other. While understanding if the product is cruelty-free or vegan, you need to understand what is the source of each ingredient and how the product was tested.
Cruelty-free:
When we say cruelty-free, we essentially mean that the product was not tested on animals while making it or before making it available in the market. China, for once, made headlines in 2021 for announcing that they will ban pre-market animal testing for ‘general’ cosmetics. It means that the product can be made available in Mainland China without mandatorily testing on animals. But there are many loopholes to it and only if the brand fit the requirement then it can bypass pre-market animal testing. This is the reason why the brands which are available in China are not accepted as cruelty-free brands. One might wonder why would a brand or country be obsessed with animal testing. It is simply because some still believe that animal testing is the safest way to test the product. But we live in 2022 where there are options of in-vitro human tissue tests and computer predictions which can give precise answers. You need not worry with Skinvest, because we are literate enough to use other means instead of animals to test our product’s efficiency and efficacy.
Vegan products:
A product is vegan when all the ingredients in the product formulation are derived synthetically or from natural sources instead of animals. For example, a product containing beeswax, honey, different types of animal milk, etc cannot be called a vegan product. For consumers, this can be a grey area since there are ingredients that can be synthetically sourced, plant-sourced, and animal-sourced. Peptides, collagen, squalene oil, stearic acid, and pigments are just a few examples. In such cases of ambiguity, one has the right to question the brand and understand the source of each ingredient. With Skinvest products, you can be sure that all of our products are vegan.
There’s a huge gap in the awareness of why animal testing and animal sourcing of ingredients are harming the world. Kindness starts with you and the choices that you make daily. Choose kindness with brands like us who choose to remain cruelty-free and vegan!
Written by Divya Salvi
