Vegans: are your products tested on animals?

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August 6, 11:59 AMVegan ExaminerAdam Kochanowicz

I've always been very interested in the simplicity of making vegan resources

easier to find. In a time where practically any information can be retrieved

within seconds in the palm of our hand, vegan resources have yet to achieve

their full potential.

 

Recently, I've also been paying closer attention not only to the contents of my

products, but the means by which they were created. This is why I'm excited

about the collaboration of internet users on my " Is it Vegan " directory which I

will detail below.

 

Recently, I got a noticeable haircut at a rather fancy hairstyling salon (a

reader tells me I now look like John Mayer...I don't know how I feel about

that.) As the stylist recommended some products to me, I plainly stated that I

was a vegan. She enthusiastically picked up the bottle to show the words

" Tested on humans. " At first, I was pleased it was not only free of animal

testing but that someone would even go to the trouble of labeling. However,

upon reading over the ingredients, I found several products which were

definitely derived from animals. So the styling clay wasn't tested on animals,

it just had their bodies liquified inside it.

 

The largest vegan/animal tester directory on the web

 

 

Anyone can add, modify, delete, or recover listings.I wrote earlier on this new

vegan ingredient lookup tool for ingredients, alcohols, and more. And the short

URL feature which allows you to type " vegan.fm/ " and the name of your

product/ingredient/alcohol yielding a quick search.

 

In this article, I wish to highlight some of the successes of this project and a

few new pages I think you'll really like.

 

Community

 

The " Is it Vegan? " directory is a wiki. Like Wikipedia, this means anyone can

edit the contents. I've also recently implemented discussion on every page.

Collaboration is important because fact checking can be very tedious.

Discussion is critical because the veganity of some items may not be black and

white. For instance, refined sugar is processed with bone char but it may

appear in products listing only vegan ingredients on the label.

 

This resource will only be useful to vegans as long as people like you go in to

add their two cents. If you see something that needs correcting or can take

some time out to extract information from a product's website, your help is

appreciated by the continued visits of vegans.

 

Animal Testing

 

Here is what this article is really about. I commend all vegans who dilligently

read labels but I beg of those dedicated inidviduals to pay attention to the

companies who send out those products. While Tide laundry detergent and Braun

shaving tools may not have animal products in them, they come from a company who

rampantly tests on animals. To look up the company of your product, see

Vegan.fm/animal_testers It's very possible your home cleaning and hygeine

products are produced by companies like P & G so see Vegan.fm/proctor_gamble_co to

look over a familiar list of products.

 

Other Products

 

Of course, this isn't meant to push my own projects. I also recommend

Barnviore.com, an excellent collaboration of vegan alcohol enthusiasts who have

checked and double checked the processing of thousands of wines, beers, and

liquors. There's also IsItVegan.com which has thorough blog postings of various

products. To anyone who is interested in creating their own place for internet

collaboration, just remember, there's a wealth of guides and manuals out there

for those who are not computer programmers like myself. I love to see sites

like these come out to make being a vegan easier and I expect to see even more.

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