Thursday, October 3, 2013

essence beauty | Two types of animal testing & did the EU really ban animal testing?!



Hey guys!

I'm sure you've either heard of Essence makeup or seen their products in Ulta stores. They are a drug store priced cosmetics company. I've seen a couple of cruelty-free beauty blogger talk about them, as I'm sure you might have.

SIDENOTE: I encourage you to reach out and email companies for yourselves. I don’t want my blog to me some kind of authority or definite sawyer of which companies are cruelty-free. I put my list out there because that is the list I, personally, use when shopping. Even if I didn’t have this blog I would still use my list, LeapingBunny’s, PETA’s, VeggieBeauty’s as resources. Hopefully, you understand where I’m coming from.

I had emailed them previously, maybe three or four times. I didn’t receive a reply for months. Maybe a month ago I received a reply. I learned a lot about essence as a company that I didn’t know before. (Which really re-enforces the importance of researching the companies you choose to support).

I emailed them using the format I always use.

This is what I received from essence:

Dear Camila,
thank you for the interest in our products and sorry for the delay. We are pleased to answer your question. Yes, it is true that we do not test our products on animals.
Since the autumn of 1998, animal testing for decorative or pampering cosmetic end-products is no longer permitted. Germany is leading the way in Europe with this legislation. We can assure you that cosnova neither conducts testing on animals, nor commissions it to any third parties – not in Germany or anywhere else in the world. We also strongly disapprove of testing on animals with end-products. This is also one of the criteria for the selection of cosnova suppliers as we need to ensure that their products are also produced without testing on animals. Our suppliers need to sign contracts in which they ensure not to do animal test.

Furthermore we do only use substances that conform with the European and International (f.e. FDA) Cosmetic Law and therefore their riskiness has been estimated a long time ago and is considered as safe. According to the use of palm oil or carnauba wax:
Yes, we do use these ingredients within different essence products of our actual product range. Because of the broad spectrum of our product range it is not possible to verify every plant ingredient’s origin for criteria of sustainability.
According to vegan products:
When producing our decorative products we do not use any ingredients directly derived from animals, such as placenta extracts or animal fat. We do, however, use materials such as beeswax, silk, or lanolin (wool fat from sheep) and the natural dye cochenille (CI 75470) which are indeed animal components (animal by-products), strictly speaking. Ingredients or raw materials from animals like pig, cattle, sheep or goat are not used in any of the products, except ingredients as mentioned before like lanolin or beeswax. The goods have passed the quality control and comply with our high standards and the directives of the World Health Organization.
But due to the nature and origin of single product components we do not consider our products as „vegan”. We are sorry, but it is not possible to send a summary of listed “vegan” products. But if there are single products you are interested in, we can check for the use of ingredients called animal by-products.

We hope we have been able to clarify this issue for you and that you will continue to have lots of fun with our products.

Should you have any further questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact us again at any time.

Kind regards,
Your essence Team

That’s a lot of information, which is great but it also requires further examination. I first have to email cosnova and ask about their companies and their cruelty-free status, standards, etc. You will notice, they did not address the China question. (China mandates animal testing for cosmetic products that are sold there). I emailed them again! Inquiring about it!
To Whomever it May Concern:
I am doing research on animal testing, and I need to verify a few key points about your company. Please be sure to answer each question.
1. How many companies does Cosnova own?
2. How does cosnova ensure their raw ingredients are not tested on animals?

3. Does cosnova sell in the Chinese market? Where animal testing is required by law.

Thank you so much! Any reply I receive will he shared on humanelychic.blogspot.com, which is my private blog. HumanelyChic currently has over 39,000 views!!
-Camila

This was their reply:

Dear Camila,


Thank you for your message. We would like to provide you with some general information regarding your enquiry about animal testing:
Since the autumn of 1998, animal testing for decorative or pampering cosmetic end-products is no longer permitted. Germany is leading the way in Europe with this legislation. We can assure you that cosnova neither conducts testing on animals, nor commissions it to any third parties – not in Germany or anywhere else in the world. We also strongly disapprove of testing on animals with end-products. This is also one of the criteria for the selection of cosnova suppliers as we need to ensure that their products are also produced without testing on animals.

To guarantee the safety of our products, we are only allowed to use completely harmless ingredients (just like other manufacturers).

One must therefore differentiate between two types of testing on animals. Animal testing to prove the effectiveness of cosmetics can be avoided as there are now sufficiently adequate alternative methods. However, animal testing to ascertain the so-called “toxicological profile” of ingredients are indispensible and mandatory until further notice.

This safety data is required by the German legislation for chemicals; it must be determined for all new raw materials – whether synthetic or natural. It must be established how dangerous a pure substance is in order to implement the necessary safety precautions during manufacture and processing of the materials.
There are no exceptions for this safety evaluation, all manufacturers and importers in the EU must conduct these tests. Unfortunately, this can mean, for example, that an animal test may have taken place to test a specific ingredient twenty or thirty years ago.
The term “not tested on animals” is only legally allowed if no testing has ever taken place on the finished products as well as all of the ingredients. This is never actually the case.

We are not on the so-called “positive list” of the German Animal Protection Association (Deutschen Tierschutzbund). The companies listed there have committed to only using ingredients for which no animal testing has been conducted in the past 25 years, which means that the raw materials are extremely old. In the field of decorative cosmetics this is very unrealistic because we aim to offer our consumers new, innovative and better products and some ingredients are therefore replaced with new and improved versions, which are, for example, kinder to your skin. This is the reason you will find practically no producers of decorative cosmetics on this list.

We hope we have been able to clarify this issue for you and that you will continue to have lots of fun with our products.

Should you have any further questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact us again at any time.
Best regards,

cosnova GmbH

I'm really confused about the whole "two-types of animal testing" situation. I makes me weary about EU's ban on animal testing because if the ban only applies to "effectiveness of cosmetics" testing, that would imply that some type of animal testing is still legal. These are just my thoughts/conclusions based on the content of this email.I am just as confused about this email as you are/might be!

For now we know -though, they did not state it bluntly- that cosnova is associated and/or conducts animal testing for their "new ingredient" products. Seeing as cosnova is essence's parent company I cannot support them! (I will be adding them to my Non-cruelty-free list.)

This was a long and complicated process and I still have questions! I encourage you to help me research this and to leave me feedback!! Thanks so much for reading this and choosing cruelty-free companies. It DOES make a difference!


Lots of Love,

Camila

3 comments:

  1. Cosnova also own Catrice, another drugstore brand available in Europe and some other countries. It's a little more expensive and also a bit more good in quality. I know they have also other brands.

    The March 2013 ban is about the ingredients animal testing. I did a post some time ago in my blog, if you don't mind I'll link it here. In the post I linked to the EU site.
    http://ere-kanezawa.blogspot.it/2013/05/kanezawa-files-2-i-test-animali-nella.html
    It's in Italian but you may translate it with Google and it should be at least understandable.
    Things said in Essence's mail are a bit strange in my opinion. Now animal testing should be banned also for the new ingredients since alternative methods have been developed.
    I don't know if they only expressed it in a bad way, but animal testing on finished products has been banned in 2004... so why, almost 10 years later, are we still talking about testing on finished products? Odd. Maybe their suppliers have to certificate they don't make tests on animals because many suppliers are involved in the pharmaceutical industry.
    Last but not least, in my country Essence is distributed by non-cruelty free distributors, and so may be in other countries, and I noticed this is something you don't appreciate.
    If you wish to support all-round cruelty free brands, I'd suggest you to go and buy only Leaping Bunny approved brands, and only-organic/eco-friendly certified brands, as most animalist groups and association suggest. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ...or indie brands, I was forgetting about them!
      Sorry for the long comment!

      Delete
  2. This was extremely helpful and I appreciate your dedication! I am admittedly bummed, though, because it's always nice to see cheap brands that are cruelty-free and I wanted to add essence to that list. *Sigh*

    ReplyDelete

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