The launch of Etude dates back to 1985 and it’s been more than 35 years since they’ve been in business, providing its family across the globe with skincare and cosmetics.
The brand indeed has made a name for itself in this category because maintaining this level of quality, along with the sprinkle of 4.0+ star rating on the store, is a symbol that depicts its authority at the apex.
Boiling down to the question that brought you here,
Etude is not a cruelty free brand and its products are tested on animals by itself, partners, or any third parties involved.
Cruelty Free is not just a phrase but a phenomenon that decides whether any particular brand indulges in anti-animal protocols.
These protocols are of multiple ways where either the animals are injected to check the toxicity of any product, or they’re physically tortured to double-check or test the product in the first place.
The consequences that this activity has had are enormously damaging because this gave rise to animal testing, later on building up into chaos, disrupting the whole ecosystem.
The world now is, by the way, shifting towards safe and sustainable ways to test the products. Still, some parts of the world are practicing these activities that not only disturb but damage animal lives.
There are multiple ways for us to find out if any brand is cruelty free or not; let us enlist some of these ways,
- A brand is cruelty free if it doesn’t test its products on animals.
- A brand is cruelty free if none of the parties it’s in partnership with promotes testing on animals.
- A brand is cruelty free if any third-party it works with doesn’t support animal testing.
- A brand is cruelty free if it doesn’t sell in mainland China or any country where animal testing is a condition to sell their products.
The website directly doesn’t advocate or state that they support or condemn anti-animal policies. So, we tried to probe on our own and searched for the data to make it relevant.
Generally speaking, of all the brands we’ve so far covered – we observed that any time a brand was cruelty free, it never failed to endorse it.
The reason is quite simple; it cuts their audience to a great extent. YES! Some brands did advocate them to be cruelty free but couldn’t provide certification.
This did insinuate a doubt among us and obviously, it must have done so to its audience too.
But, giving them the benefit of the doubt helped us come to a conclusion.
Here, in this case, neither Etude claims its cruelty free tag nor is there any third party organization ready to vouch for its legitimacy.
This part now came down to us where we indirectly drew a relevance and it most of the time works. We searched if Etude sells its products in mainland China or not.
We found that Etude does sell its products in different outlets across China and the brand is quite open about it. It’s been almost 8 years since its opening in China and the website clearly mentions it.
Given the above condition, we’ve concluded that Etude is not a 100% cruelty-free brand. And as said, its products are shipped to China, where animal testing is required by law to sell products. There’s a high probability of Etude to be cruel.
Secondly, Etude doesn’t hold any certification to prove its innocence and neither do they claim so.
This cements the statement mentioned above that Etude is actually not cruelty-free and those who’re conscious of their choice should not opt for this in order to buy cosmetics or skincare products.
One other red flag that we observed is that the parent company of Etude Amore Pacific does tests on animals in the manufacturing phase.
Etude is more or less a subdivision of it and, probably, Etude isn’t cruelty free as its parent brand.
There’s another question that’s asked a lot and people these days are highly conscious of it; let’s see what it is.
Is Etude Vegan?
The vegan status of a brand is of high significance these days. More and more people are shifting towards animal-friendly policies. And this dictates the discouragement of using anything coming directly or indirectly from animals.
Although animals are not hurt by anti-vegan stuff. Still, vegans deem it the animal’s right to keep their products to them. This practice had recently attained hype when many celebrities and especially the PhD’s came into the picture and conveyed how vegan-friendly life is beneficial not just for our health but to the environment too.
This did set a chain of reactions and people exponentially shifted their attitudes, opening doors to animal-friendly protocols.
Brands are vegan friendly only if any of their practice isn’t associated with animals in any possible way.
On research, we concluded that Etude isn’t a vegan friendly brand as their products are tested on animals while they are manufactured.
Coming down to a million-dollar question,
Is Etude Ethical?
Ethics undoubtedly are germane measures to gauge the effectiveness and authoritativeness of a brand. The more ethically strong a brand, the lesser damage it does to its surroundings. Money at the cost of lives is nothing but malpractice.
Unfortunately, such practices are still common, but we all should join hands to fight this ever-increasing danger howling over the environment and other living beings.
Based on the definition we’ve documented above, one thing is pretty evident and needs no argument. And that’s the status of Etude in ethical terms.
Etude is a brand that’s cruel which means it does test its product on animals, or the other way said – Etude does damage the ecosystem and disrupts the harmony of the planet for the sake of the products they manufacture.
That’s the sole reason for us to rate Etude low regarding its ethical status.
The only way this can be avoided is to discourage animal testing and promote animal-friendly protocols.
