Dear Melyssa,
Thank you for the interest in our products. We are pleased to answer your questions. 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 in Germany. In line with the new European Cosmetic Regulation (EC) 1223/2009 animal testing is restricted as well in European law. 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. This is also one of the criteria for the selection of cosnova suppliers as we need to ensure that their products are produced strictly without testing on animals.
To guarantee the safety of our products, we are only allowed to use completely harmless ingredients (just like other manufacturers).
There are two types of animal testing: testing of single substances or cosmetic end products. Animal testing to prove the effectiveness of cosmetics can be avoided as there are now sufficiently adequate alternative methods. We also strongly disapprove of testing on animals with end-products.
According to chemical law new substances need to be safety evaluated for creating so-called “toxicological profile”. 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. Sometimes in line with this safety evaluation animal testing was in use. Therefore it may have occurred that some raw materials have been tested twenty or thirty years ago.
Now there are a lots of new alternative methods instead of testing the substances on animals. For examples cell culture methods are often used to test the toxicity of a substance. That means that adequate cell lines are cultured in a petri dish and get in contact with the substance of interest. Afterwards different characteristic of the cell, like metabolic rate, cell division or specific metabolized substances were checked to estimate the cell vitality.
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 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.
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.