Beauty Without Cruelty is an animal rights organisation with a primary objective to educate and inform the public about the exploitation, abuse and suffering of animals and to offer humane, non-animal alternatives to replace cruel and harmful lifestyle choices.
Our main focus is on animal testing and in particular testing done for household cleaners and cosmetics, which is anything used on the human body for any reason, and this would naturally include products for males, children and infants. To this end, BWC initiated the Bill to ban cosmetics animal-based testing in South Africa, which was recently gazetted.
BWC offers The Humane Guide which is a list of all companies endorsed for their humane status by Beauty without Cruelty. These companies have been audited by BWC and have proven they do not test their products on animals by passing stringent criteria. Many big name products we see on our supermarket shelves and in our department store cosmetic counters have been tested on animals. Because animal testing is so prevalent, it is far more practical to audit individual companies to endorse with the Humane Guide than it is to provide a list of products that are tested on animals in which to avoid.
#BeKindUseTheGuide
Many large companies claim that they don’t test their products on animals or that they don’t support animal testing. In many cases they go through great lengths to use deceptive PR methods and clever wording to conceal this information. A few ways in which a company may do this are:
- The company truthfully claims the final product has not been tested on animals, but the separate ingredients for their products have been tested on animals.
- The company doesn’t test on animals, but a parent company or subsidiary company still tests its final product or product ingredients on animals.
- The company itself doesn’t test on animals, but outsources the animal testing to a third party.
- The company does not test on animals themselves but continues to buy, use and benefit financially from chemical ingredients that have recently been tested on animals by their suppliers.
You can get anything from beard-care to baby-bum cream, toothpaste to toilet-cleaner, mascara to moisturiser and aftershave to aqueous cream – BWC has over 120 brands endorsed, and the list is growing. Should a company not be listed in our Humane Guide, but they are certain that their products are humane and will pass our criteria, then ask them to apply to be listed on our Humane Guide.
Never rely solely only on a company’s word. If their products are truly humanely manufactured and not tested on animals, then they should be able to pass our basic criteria and Beauty without Cruelty would be happy to endorse them, at no cost ever to consumer or company.
The Advertising Standards Authority (now called Advertising Regulatory Board) states that companies must be able to provide proof of their humane claims. BWC is an accepted independent organisation able to audit such proof.
If a product says things like No animal testing / Cruelty Free / Against animal testing etc. on their packaging or website it does not mean it is true. This is a common tactic used in deceptive marketing and labelling. A product can only be certified as “humane” if it is endorsed by a third independent party. Many companies also include rabbit logos on their packaging – but this is no guarantee that the item is genuinely humanely manufactured either.
Unless a bunny logo is that of a verified third party auditor like Beauty without Cruelty then this cannot be taken at face value. This is a deceptive marketing process called green-washing or humane-washing to make products appear to be ethical, green or humane to the consumer.
A letter from a company saying they don’t and won’t animal test is irrelevant. Why? Because companies lie.
In several ways, and one of those ways is to hide behind saying they ‘only animal test when required to do so by law’, or that they will adhere to a countries guidelines in this regard. ALL the large brands do this. We will say it again – it’s not what they say, it’s what they PROVE.
There are many alternatives to the use of animals in research. The most common type of alternative methods involves in-vitro tests, skin and cell cultures, epidemiology, computer software, databases of tests already done to avoid duplication and human clinical trial tests. Donated blood can be successfully used for pyrogenicity studies and micro dosing, which involves volunteers receiving very small doses of a drug to assess its basic behaviour.
#BeKindUseTheGuide
We receive no government or lottery funding, and rely entirely on the generosity of our supporters to continue our work for animals.
Beauty without Cruelty means living without cruelty.
