Vegan cosmetics: Inside the world’s first completely animal-free contract testing lab

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Vegan cosmetics: Inside the world’s first completely animal-free contract testing lab

3 September 2020
News
Dr. Carol Treasure discusses her hopes to accelerate the world’s transition to completely animal-free testing, to produce safe cosmetics and improve skin sensitization testing.

Treasure and her team are on a mission to accelerate the world’s transition to 100% animal-free testing. Globally, XCellR8 is thought to be the only contract testing laboratory leading a completely animal-free testing approach. “There has been increasing public pressure for decades regarding how we could replace animal testing, especially in the cosmetics industry, with a lot of our key clients being large cosmetic companies,” says Treasure. “The companies we work with must comply with European regulations. These regulations do not allow for any cosmetic products or ingredients to be tested on animals.” 

XCellR8 does not use any animal-derived materials in their laboratories. As a result, they offer tests that are fully compliant with vegan standards and are one of the first laboratories to have received full approval of some of their tests from The Vegan Society.

To understand the true benefits of animal-free products in the cosmetic industry, Treasure states “part of our goal is to raise awareness about this issue, for other labs to follow our lead. XCellR8 are really pioneering this approach, but we want other labs to stop using animal-derived products as well.” Testing cosmetic products and their ingredients on animals was banned in the U.K. and across the E.U. in 2013, nevertheless, 80% of countries do still allow testing of cosmetics on animals.