CoverGirl Just Announced It's Now Entirely Cruelty-Free

While the cruelty-free movement has been picking up steam over the last few years, this marks a huge step forward for the cosmetics industry: Beauty behemoth CoverGirl is now entirely cruelty-free.

The brand's announcement this morning underscores just what a landmark year 2018 has been for cruelty-free advocates. Just last month California motioned to ban all cosmetic animal testing for products sold in the state by 2020. Meanwhile, Dove recently announced that as of January 2019, all of its products will have PETA accreditation.

Going cruelty-free felt like the obvious next step for the brand, which has made noticeable efforts to become more inclusive in both its shade ranges and advertising. And it's as much about creating cruelty-free products as it is giving people access to those cruelty-free products. “As a brand, we believe that ethical beauty choices should be accessible and affordable for all," Ukonwa Ojo, the chief marketing officer of Coty Consumer Beauty (CoverGirl's parent company), told Glamour. Because while cruelty-free is no longer as hard to find as it once was, it's typically been reserved for niche brands with a higher price point (with a few notable exceptions, including Nyx Cosmetics and Milani).

What makes the move especially important is that CoverGirl is the first makeup brand of its size to earn a Leaping Bunny seal. Though Coty Consumer Beauty has had policies against animal-testing in place for years, according to Ojo, the brand wanted to go the extra mile. And the Leaping Bunny seal is the gold standard of cruelty-free formulas. "No other certification program has the rigor that seeks to completely eliminate animal testing from a brand’s supply chain," says Ojo. "To earn the Leaping Bunny certification for CoverGirl, we verified our internal standards and established protocols for our suppliers, underwent a rigorous audit of our supply chain and ingredients, and agreed to regular independent audits of the CoverGirl supply chain." These audits and additional focus on ingredient suppliers set it apart from PETA, which only requires that companies send them a written agreement to abstain from animal testing. So while PETA's certification is certainly in good faith (and far better than no seal at all) it doesn't fully guarantee that the products are cruelty-free—in the off chance that a brand or its suppliers aren't being totally transparent.

On top of every single ingredient in CoverGirl formulas being verified as animal-friendly, they're also available wherever the brand is sold worldwide. And while the question of China often poses a challenge for cruelty-free brands, as the law there mandates that cosmetics must be tested on animals, this was an easy one for CoverGirl—since it isn't sold in China anyway.

As for when CoverGirl's makeup products will be cruelty-free, the brand thoughtfully took waiting out of the equation. Instead of rolling out new products by a certain date, all of the items currently on shelves right now are cruelty-free—meaning you can walk in the drugstore today and know that you're getting ethically tested makeup. The Leaping Bunny logo, meanwhile, will start to appear on the packaging throughout winter and next spring, just to make it official.

With the power of CoverGirl behind the cruelty-free movement, other mass beauty brands may take note and at least consider shifting to the same animal-friendly practices. Because peer pressure works—and anyway, if a corporation as big as CoverGirl can do it, there's no good reason for anyone else not to follow suit.

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