So what does cruelty free mean? To be certified cruelty-free under PETA’s Global Beauty Without Bunnies program, a company must ban all animal tests. This means that all ingredients within a product as well as the product itself have never been tested for safety on animals. At Dove, this commitment has also meant we will not commission others to test products or ingredients on animals either.
There is currently no nationwide ban on animal testing in the USA, which means the onus is on the company itself to take a stance.
Since the mid-1980s, Dove has sought multiple methods to test products and ingredients in ways that don’t involve animals but maintain the safety of human usage as its priority. Thanks to ever-developing scientific techniques and the advancement of non-animal alternatives, the production of animal-testing-free beauty is fully achievable. There really is no reason for animal testing in beauty routines.
This means that if you are searching the shelves for a new beauty favorite – from haircare and deodorants to bodycare – and you want to know what are cruelty-free products, it is now easier than ever to shop consciously. Thanks to Dove being certified as cruelty-free by PETA’s Beauty Without Bunnies program, all its products now carry PETA’s cruelty-free logo.
Dove is committed to ending cosmetic animal testing and pushing for systemic change in the industry along with its parent company, Unilever.
Unilever has been developing non-animal approaches to product testing for the last three decades, and is also an active member of the Animal-Free Safety Assessment Collaboration coordinated by Humane Society International, which encourages modern approaches to cosmetic safety assessment. As a result, Unilever was also recently recognized by PETA as a company working for regulatory change.