What Leaping Bunny Certification Means: The Bunny on Our Label
A woman at the dog park asked me a question last month that I loved, because it was slightly suspicious.
She'd been using our Detangling Treatment on her Cavapoo, saw the words cruelty free on the label, and asked: but how would I actually know that's true?
I could have given her the short answer, the little bunny logo. Instead she got the long answer, standing by the water fountain while her Cavapoo tried to eat a tennis ball. This post is that answer, because she was right to be suspicious, and I think you deserve to know exactly what that bunny means before you trust it.
Anyone can print cruelty free
Here's the uncomfortable truth about the phrase: cruelty free has no legal definition in the United States. No agency checks it. No inspector verifies it. A brand can print those words, and a cute bunny of their own design, on a label without changing a single thing about how their products are made.
And even in places with animal testing bans, there are loopholes wide enough to walk a Great Dane through. Ingredients can still be animal tested if they're considered irreplaceable, if a regulator requires it, or if a company sells into foreign markets whose rules demand it. A brand can be technically compliant with a testing ban and still be connected to animal testing several steps up its supply chain, usually at the ingredient level, where nobody's looking.
That's the gap Leaping Bunny exists to close.
What Leaping Bunny actually requires
The Leaping Bunny Program is run by the American Anti-Vivisection Society, using a standard approved by the Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics. It's widely considered the strictest cruelty free certification there is, more than 2,300 companies have earned it. Getting certified isn't a pledge or a fee. It's a process, and it reaches all the way down the supply chain. A certified company must:
- Adopt a fixed cut off date. A permanent, unchangeable date after which neither the company nor any of its suppliers or manufacturers may conduct, commission, or be party to animal testing. Not we don't test. A date, in writing, forever.
- Monitor every supplier. The company has to collect signed declarations from its manufacturers and ingredient suppliers, all the way back to the original maker of each ingredient, confirming they comply too. The finished product, the formula, and every ingredient in it.
- Open its books to independent audits. That supplier monitoring system can be audited by an independent firm to verify it's real.
- Recommit every single year. Certification isn't a trophy on the shelf. It renews annually, or it lapses.
That's the difference between a marketing phrase and a certification. One is printed. The other is proven, supplier by supplier, year after year.
Why a dog company needed to do this
Will asked the obvious question when we started the paperwork: we make products for dogs, shouldn't this go without saying?
You'd think so. But the supply chain doesn't care what your label says you love. The conditioning agents, the extracts, the preservatives, every ingredient in every grooming product came from somewhere, and it either has a history of animal testing behind it or it doesn't. A dog brand can absolutely be built on ingredients that were tested on animals. Plenty are. The bottle just doesn't mention it.
We couldn't square that. Our products exist because of Skip and his nine puppies, animals we love like family who taught us everything we know. Building products for them on the backs of other animals somewhere upstream wasn't a compromise we were willing to make quietly, and Leaping Bunny was the only way to prove it rather than just say it.
Our formulas made it easier than it might have been. We built the line around herbal ingredients, calendula, hibiscus, burdock root, and nettle leaf, and our products are vegan and plant based, made in the USA. But easier isn't the same as automatic. We still documented every supplier, signed the fixed cut off date, and committed to the annual renewal. Worth every form.
The part that connects to our kitchen table
Our product testing lab has always been our living room floor. The testers are paid in belly rubs.
That's a joke Will makes, but it's also literally our quality process: does the mat come out of Skip's coat, does the puppy with the cottony coat brush easier, does the formula sit gently on skin that's already irritated. Real dogs, our dogs, in our home, never animals in a lab. Leaping Bunny takes that same standard we've always held in our own house and extends it to every company we buy a single ingredient from.
The woman at the dog park, by the way, ended the conversation by looking down at her Cavapoo and saying, well, she'd approve. That's about the highest review we can get.
What I want you to take from this
If you take one thing from this post, take this: build the habit, and not just for our products. Next time a label says cruelty free, look for the Leaping Bunny logo, or search the brand in the Leaping Bunny Compassionate Shopping Guide at leapingbunny.org. It takes ten seconds. If the brand is certified, they earned it and they'll be there. If they're not, ask them why not. It's a fair question, and you now know enough to ask it.
You read ingredient labels for your dog's food. This is the same instinct, one shelf over.
Frequently Asked Questions: Leaping Bunny
Is cruelty free on a label regulated by anyone?
No. The phrase has no legal definition and no agency verifies it. Any brand can print it, along with a bunny logo of its own invention. That's exactly why third party certifications like Leaping Bunny exist, the seal is only granted after the company documents its entire supply chain and commits to annual renewal.
What makes Leaping Bunny stricter than other cruelty free claims?
Four things: a permanent fixed cut off date for animal testing, supplier declarations that reach all the way back to the original ingredient makers, openness to independent audits of that system, and mandatory annual recommitment. Most self made claims cover only the finished product, Leaping Bunny covers the ingredients too.
Does Skip The Groomer test its products on animals?
Never, no animal testing at any stage, by us or by our suppliers, which is exactly what our Leaping Bunny certification verifies. The only testing our products ever see is on our own dogs at home, the same way you'd use them: a brush, a bath, and a very patient Goldendoodle.
Where can I verify a brand's certification?
The Compassionate Shopping Guide at leapingbunny.org lists every certified company, and Leaping Bunny also has a free app you can use in the store aisle.
Demat. Detangle. Clean.
Your Dog. Your Way.