Is Dove Cruelty Free and Vegan?
Summary About Dove
Yes, Dove is a 100% transparent brand in terms of animal testing. Even though they do not meet our cruelty-free criteria, they still answered our cruelty-free questions and shared their animal testing policy.
No, Dove is not a cruelty‑free brand because they do direct or indirect animal testing. Let's take a look at each animal testing criteria.
No, Dove does not test final products or ingredients on animals.
No, their suppliers do not test on animals.
No, Dove does not do any animal testing through 3rd-parties.
Yes, Dove is sold in mainland China. China is the only country that requires animal testing.
No, Dove does not test on animals in China, but their products still can be tested on animals by post-market product testing labs when there is a customer complaint about their products.
China exempts animal testing on brands
- if they manufacture the products in China
- if they go through a pre-market animal testing exemption process
- if they do not sell special use cosmetics such as sunscreen, skin brightening products, hair dyes etc. in China
Dove could avoid pre-market mendatory animal testing by meeting these conditions. However, this only applies to pre-market testing. Being cruelty-free is not 100% guaranteed because products with consumer complaints can be randomly chosen for post-market animal testing in China.
Dove is certified as cruelty-free by PETA, but not certified by Leaping Bunny. A brand can be sold in China and still be certified by PETA as cruelty-free because PETA allows brands to sell their products in a country where animal testing is required by law. Since Dove could provide proof that they went through a proper pre-market animal testing exemption process in China, PETA approved them. On the other hand, Leaping Bunny has stricter rules and they require absolutely no animal testing, anywhere.
Yes, Dove is owned by Unilever, which is not a cruelty-free brand.
No, Dove is not a 100% vegan brand because some of their products contain animal ingredients or animal by-products.
We consider a brand as 100% vegan if their products do not contain
- animal ingredients
- animal by-products (including honey and beeswax)
- any other animal-derived ingredients
Dove does not meet this criteria.
We do not consider Dove a cruelty-free brand, and you might be curious how we collected this info. The public information was not enough for us to tell if Dove meets our cruelty-free criteria. Thus, we reached out to them and asked questions. Below is the screenshot of their response.
