Vegan is a claim about sourcing, and the list cannot confirm it

Vegan on a cosmetic means no animal derived ingredient and, for most certifiers, no animal testing. It is a claim about where things came from and how they were tested.

An ingredient list does not record either of those things. It records what is in the bottle.

40 products carry vegan in the name across what we hold, and only one ingredient list prints it, as a description in brackets next to an entry rather than as an ingredient name, because it is not an ingredient. That is not a gap the brand could close by writing more carefully. It is what the word is.

So the useful question is not whether the list confirms it. The useful question is what the list can rule out, and what only a certifier can settle.

What you can check yourself

The list will not confirm vegan. It will sometimes contradict it, and that is worth knowing, because a contradiction is checkable in thirty seconds.

Animal derived ingredients that still appear on Korean labels are a short list, and they are easy to spot once you know the names.

• Beeswax, and honey or propolis alongside it.
• Lanolin, from wool.
• Carmine, a red colourant from insects, usually written as a colour index number.
• Snail mucin, printed as a filtrate.
• Collagen and elastin, where the source is not stated. Marine and plant derived versions exist, so this one is ambiguous rather than disqualifying.
• Hydrolyzed ovum, meaning egg.

Find any of those on a list that says vegan and you have found a real problem. Find none of them and you have found nothing, because the ingredient that fails the test may be a processing aid that never reaches the label.

What only the certifier can settle

Testing is the half that no ingredient list will ever show. So is the origin of an ingredient that exists in both animal and plant versions, which is most of the ambiguous ones.

This is the same structure as every other document backed word on a package: the word points at a paper, and the paper either has a name on it or it does not. Vegan certification is issued by specific bodies with published standards, and a certification with no issuer named is a sentence rather than a document. We set out that test in certified, patented, hypoallergenic.

Vegan AHA PHA Ampoule advertises a vegan certification. The page naming that certification does not name who issued it. That does not make the claim false. It makes it unverifiable from where you are standing, which is a different and more common problem.

Vegan says nothing about the rest of the formula

This is the part that catches people, and it is not the brands' fault. The word answers one question and shoppers hear it answering four.

Problem Solution Vegan PHA Clearing Toner prints a fragrance ingredient and carries a drying alcohol. Neither has anything to do with whether the formula is vegan, and neither is disqualifying on its own. They are simply separate questions that the front of the bottle is not answering.

VEGAN VITAMIN COLLAGEN WRAPPING MASK prints a fragrance ingredient and carries retinyl palmitate, which puts it in the group that carries a pregnancy caution in our reading. Vegan and suitable during pregnancy are unrelated claims, and one does not imply the other.

SO VEGAN SAL BUTTER GLOW CREAM PACK also prints a fragrance ingredient. Its name points at a plant butter, which is at least an ingredient you can find in the list and judge.

Across the 2,228 labels whose full list we hold, 1,519 of them print no fragrance ingredient and 190 carry a drying alcohol. Those two counts are knowable from the label. Vegan status is not. Sorting by the thing you can check tends to serve you better than sorting by the thing you cannot.

Clean is a weaker word than vegan

Vegan at least has certifiers with published criteria behind it. Clean has no agreed definition at all, and in practice it means a list of ingredients a particular brand has decided to leave out.

That makes clean a free from list wearing a shorter name, and free from lists have a known failure mode: they tell you what is absent and say nothing about what replaced it. The method for reading one is in free from lists versus ingredient lists.

How to read these labels

• Scan for the known animal ingredients first. It is the only part of the claim the list can settle, and it takes seconds.
• Look for a named certifier. A logo with a body behind it is a document. A sentence is not.
• Read fragrance, alcohol and actives separately. Vegan constrains none of them.
• Treat clean as marketing until someone defines it. Ask which ingredients it excludes, then check whether you cared about those ingredients.

Common questions

Is vegan the same as cruelty free?

Not quite, though most certifiers bundle them. Vegan is about ingredients, cruelty free is about testing. A product can satisfy one and not the other, which is why the certifier's actual standard matters.

Does vegan mean gentler?

No. Plenty of plant derived ingredients are irritating and plenty of animal derived ones are not. Sensitivity is decided by the specific formula, not by the sourcing rule.

Is vegan better for the environment?

It is a different question again, and the answer depends on the specific ingredient and how it is farmed. The word carries no environmental claim on its own.

How do I check a certification?

Find the certifier's name, then look the product up on that certifier's own register. Most publish one. If you cannot find a name to look up, that is your answer for now.

Is glycerin vegan?

It can come from either plants or animal fat, and the list will usually not say which. This is the clearest example of why the label cannot settle the question by itself.

If you are holding a product that says vegan and want to know what its list actually rules out, send us the page. We will read it with you.