It's the 21st century but we sadly live in a world where cosmetics are still tested on animals. At Odylique we think animal testing in any shape or form is barbaric, unnecessary and frankly, irrelevant.
Odylique products have of course never been tested on animals, we use a panel of human volunteers to test each and every one of our products and also use the precautionary principle to determine whether an ingredient is acceptable in our organic health and beauty products. In other words, "if in doubt, do without" - if any research casts doubt over the ingredient's safety to humans or the environment, we will not use it.
We also go the extra step and also ensure our ingredient suppliers do not test on animals either. We won't buy ingredients that have been tested on animals since 1990 (our 'fixed cut-off date' FCOD).
Our Accreditation
We are proud to be accredited by both PETA and the Naturewatch Foundation who campaign relentlessly to make the world a cruelty free place.
PETA accredited companies – and their parent companies - must be cruelty free and prove they have a system in place to check all a brand's suppliers do not endorse, fund or conduct animal experiments.
The Naturewatch Foundation insists that brands endorsed in its Compassionate Shopping Guide have a fixed cut-off date policy in place. In other words, a company won’t use any newly developed ingredients which have been subject to animal testing after their chosen cut-off date. Naturewatch monitors the policy of any parent company too, to ensure the brand isn’t indirectly funding unethical practices (including animal testing) carried out by a parent company or any other subsidiaries.
EU Laws on Animal Testing:
You might think that EU laws introduced in 2013 eradicated animal testing on cosmetics completely, but no. As we explain in our blog, multinational brands who sell in retail stores in countries like China where animal testing is required can get around that regulation. For this reason, we will only ever sell in China online (animal testing not required) until the laws change.
Awarded for our Dedication
Back in 2006 we won an RSPCA award (for small businesses) for our firm stance against animal-testing (mid-way through formulating a new sun cream we found out that one of the key ingredients had recently been tested on animals and we had to start again from scratch).
And apart from honey and beeswax in a few products, all our formulations are entirely vegan. We also don’t use creature based ingredients, like the colour carmine (crushed insects) you can read more about this on our blog.