#6

My toothpaste had a “cruelty free” logo similar to the one pictured below. Cruelty Free means that the product hasn’t been tested on animals. It should be noted that no organization or group is responsible to check if these companies are actually not testing their product on animals which raises a few concerns. A common misconception that I found while researching was that cruelty free and vegan were the same thing, they are not vegan means that no animal products were used in the item where cruelty free can have animal products in them they just don’t test the item on animals themselves even if they’re already ingredients. The biggest issue by far with this label as I mentioned before is that no one monitors the legitimacy of the claims of companies so we really don’t know if it’s actually cruelty free. The other issue is that cruelty free only means that the company that made the product didn’t test it on animals so a easily exploited loophole would be to outsource the testing to another corporation that isn’t responsible for the creation or marketing of the product simply the testing. The 3rd and final issue I found was that you can still test components of the product on animals with the label still being justified. For example if your product contains material “A” and material “B” mixed together you could put material “A” on an animal and then put material “B” on an animal separately then only combine the two after. All of this information is from EthicalElephant.com. I’m sorry to bring it back but in the end it doesn’t matter how many loopholes there are to cruelty free if nobody checks up to see if companies are being honest about how they test their products, in this day and age I’ve learned not to rely on companies simply “operating in good faith.”

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