I won’t buy from any Unilever company, knowing their cruel and unnecessary animal testing practices. It wouldn’t sit well with me to put any money into their coffers.

As a huge conglomerate it makes business sense for Unilever to get into the fast growing vegan sector and I suppose if a multi-million pound deal is offered to a private individual for their business, it may be hard to resist. But what about the ethics in all this? Basically when a vegan, cruelty-free organisation sells out to one which conducts appalling experiments on animals, ethics or integrity haven’t been a factor.

I will be looking for a totally cruelty-free company to supply my cosmetics now.

Or what I will be missing, because after this I will not seek to try out their products. I do agree with Tashina’s statement on that buying from a CF company with a non-CF parent is still much better than buying non-CF, and I would never judge or bash anyone for doing so (I just can’t understand the negativity going on in communities around this topic… why can’t people just be supportive of those who share the same basics of thinking and living? Or at least polite, should others’ PoVs not match theirs completely… even if you don’t agree with others’ personal “purchase rules”, pointing fingers and blaming others is just pointless and saddening. Especially in a “community” where, as Kim said above, perfection is pretty much impossible. Everyone draws their own borderlines between what still make them more happy than uncomfortable), but I personally do not wish to support CF companies with a non-CF parent, and will always seek other CF-alternatives first. The reason for this is that it just makes me very, very sad that while these companies claim that animal rights are important to them, it seems, apparently, that money is more important, as it proves to be enough for them to give in to another company who does not share the same ideology. There of course may very well be other factors we are not made aware of that result in such a decision, but still… luckily we’ve seen several examples of such acquisitions not going through/getting refused, so while this is becoming an usual pattern with brands recently, it is definitely not the only way. Let’s hope more and more companies will refuse to follow this pattern in the future (or less of them will get in a situation where they need to consider this in order to keep going).

I haven’t found anything in the way of a petition so far, but that could change. Also, Burt’s Bees is owned by Clorox. I believe the Hourglass acquisition is Unilever’s first time buying a makeup brand.

I think any steps towards cruelty-free are making a difference and are great. Don’t get discouraged! I think it’s so great you made the change and figured out a way for it to work for you instead of not making any change at all.

Hi Kim! I just wanted to leave a comment saying I absolutely agree with your statement. I recently decided to go cruelty-free and I’ve gotten a lot of angry and judgmental comments from people who only buy from companies with cruelty-free parent companies. I think that’s great if you choose to support cruelty-free companies with cruelty-free parent companies, but it is a personal choice. It’s frustrating to be spreading an important message like going cruelty-free and only receive backlash and negative feedback from those who think you need to be doing better. I would absolutely love to live in a world where all cruelty-free companies are independent or owned by cruelty-free parents companies. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Right now, I believe that buying from cruelty-free companies that are owned by parent companies that are not cruelty-free is absolutely better than supporting companies that test on animals. I think people should be excited that so many people are even considering this route, instead of constantly lashing out and saying that it’s not good enough. So, I just wanted to say that I appreciate your comment. To Tashina, I appreciate your website more than you know! It has helped me so much on my journey to cruelty-free beauty.

Very well said. I have maybe 2 Hourglass products since I started my CF journey. #movingon 🙁