Choose Cruelty Free Merged With Cruelty Free International

On June 1st 2021 the widely respected, Australian nonprofit organisation, Choose Cruelty Free, merged with Cruelty Free International and their global, gold standard Leaping Bunny Programme. Since Choose Cruelty Free merged with Cruelty Free International, and many of the former CCF brands are in the process of transitioning over into the Leaping Bunny family, Australian consumers looking to buy ethical, cosmetics, personal care and household cleaning products are now encouraged to visit the list of many hundreds of brands that have gone through an extremely rigorous criteria to become approved as a Leaping Bunny company.

The Leaping Bunny Programme is recognised globally and goes further than the current and various governing laws on animal testing of cosmetics.

The Leaping Bunny Programme is the best assurance that a company has made a genuine commitment to help end animal testing. Brands must meet a rigorous criteria which applies globally. Have a read here about the very strict criteria for Leaping Bunny approved brands and why the Leaping Bunny Programme is so important despite animal testing laws in the EU and other countries.

The decision to merge Choose Cruelty Free was not made lightly. Having been a volunteer director in PR and Marketing for CCF for 18 years, and then taking over the role of President for 2 years in mid 2019, I want to share with you why I believe that this is such a wonderful, momentous and positive step forward in helping to end animal testing of cosmetics, personal care and household cleaning products, not only here in Australia, but globally.

It is important to understand that practically every cosmetic, personal care and household cleaning brand will manufacture their products using raw ingredients sourced from different countries around the globe. Therefore, even if an Australian company is absolutely committed to being a cruelty free company, some of the ingredients they purchase, may have inadvertently been animal tested without them knowing. This is due to the governing laws in each country in regards to animal testing being incredibly varied.

Merging Choose Cruelty Free into Cruelty Free International and uniting into their global Leaping Bunny Programme therefore made perfect sense. We needed to be able to help our Australian brands track and monitor all their ingredients for animal testing. Every single one, right down to each individual raw ingredients, and Cruelty Free International’s Leaping Bunny Programme does this.

When brands around the world, who are against cosmetic animal testing, unite together to meet a globally recognised, highly stringent ethical standard, this in turn puts huge pressure on governments in countries that still allow animal testing of ingredients. When these brands are saying no to purchasing animal tested ingredients, the massive ingredients industry suffers causing a chain reaction. This in turns pressures the industry to push their governments to change the animal testing laws for these ingredients.

The other big pressure for change comes from consumers purchasing choices. If we refuse to purchase from brands that have not been approved by Leaping Bunny, ( incl former CCF brands), these brands will need to heavily rethink their animal testing practices if they want to stay viable in the market.

See the entire list of Leaping Bunny and former CCF Brands here