Covergirl just made itself look good. The beauty giant announced that it has eliminated animal testing from its products and from every step of its production process. While plenty of smaller cosmetic companies have opted to be cruelty free, as a major drugstore brand, Covergirl is now the biggest makeup brand to receive the trusted “Leaping Bunny” stamp of approval from Cruelty Free International (CFI), a globally recognized third-party monitor and certifier.
To make its products cruelty free, Covergirl’s parent company, Coty, spent months proving to CFI that not only does Covergirl not test its products on animals, but neither do the hundreds of third-party suppliers providing the ingredients that go into making the thousands of products in Covergirl’s portfolio. Covergirl will also undergo ongoing independent checks of its supply chain to ensure it’s living up to its promise.
Covergirl’s bold move paves the way for other cosmetic companies to make their products cruelty free, too. “If we can do it with our size and with our capability and with our complexity … every brand can do this,” says Ukonwa Ojo, chief marketing officer of consumer beauty for Coty. “If we all do it together, we can all envision a cosmetics industry and world that is free from unnecessary animal testing.”
Coty, which also owns Max Factor and Rimmel, hopes to extend its cruelty-free practices to a second brand by 2020. Just in time, too: Not only do consumers want cruelty-free products, but California is working to ban all cosmetic animal testing for products sold in the state by 2020. Coty isn’t the only company striving for animal friendliness. Unilever recently announced its support for a global ban on animal testing in the beauty industry, led by one of its biggest brands, Dove, which was certified as cruelty free by PETA.
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