Four logos, four different jobs
None of these schemes checks the same thing, and the differences are published, not hidden. Before a logo changes what you buy, it's worth thirty seconds to know what it actually reviewed: the ingredients, the animal testing, or both. The table below is drawn from each scheme's own current standard document, not from marketing copy.
| Scheme | Checks ingredients? | Checks animal testing? | The distinctive rule |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Vegan Society Trademark | Yes | Yes | Bars any animal product, by-product, or derivative in the product or its ingredients |
| Certified Vegan (Vegan Action) | Yes | Yes, since 2009 | Explicitly bans bone-char-filtered sweeteners and animal-derived GMOs |
| V-Label (vegan tier) | Yes | Yes | Allows under 0.1% unintended non-vegan trace; a separate vegetarian tier exists too |
| Leaping Bunny | No | Yes | Ingredients are not reviewed at all; only testing is |
Leaping Bunny: read the name literally
Leaping Bunny is run by the Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics under what it calls the Corporate Standard of Compassion for Animals, and the standard's own criteria section is titled CRITERIA FOR NON-ANIMAL TESTED COSMETIC AND HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTS. Its core rule: the company does not and shall not conduct, commission, or be a party to animal testing of any cosmetic and/or household products, including formulations and ingredients. Nowhere in the standard does it review what those ingredients actually are. A Leaping Bunny company can use honey, beeswax, lanolin, or carmine and still qualify, as long as nothing in its supply chain was tested on animals after its fixed cut-off date. This is the single most common mix-up in this guide: Leaping Bunny is a promise about testing, not a promise about what's inside the bottle.
The Vegan Society Trademark and Certified Vegan, side by side
Both of these check ingredients and testing, which is why they read as the closest thing to a full vegan guarantee. The Vegan Society, which coined the word vegan in 1944, states its ingredients rule plainly: the manufacture and/or development of the product, and its ingredients, must not involve or have involved the use of any animal product, by-product or derivative. It also requires reasonable steps against cross-contamination on shared production lines, but doesn't set a numeric trace threshold. Certified Vegan, run by the Vegan Awareness Foundation (Vegan Action), goes further into specifics: its standard names bone char sugar filtering, silk, wool, and down as excluded, and sets a hard animal-testing cut-off date of 2009, after which no testing of ingredients or finished product is allowed for any purpose.
V-Label: two badges, one look
V-Label, established in Switzerland in 1996, licenses two related but distinct marks off one set of criteria: a vegan definition and a looser vegetarian definition that still permits milk, eggs, honey, and wool grease. Its vegan definition rules out wax from animals, explicitly including lanolin, beeswax, and shellac, plus anything bleached with animal charcoal or clarified with gelatin or fish bladder. Unlike the other three schemes, V-Label states a numeric tolerance: unintended non-vegan trace below 0.1% of the final product doesn't automatically disqualify a license, though the producer has to show it tried to avoid the contamination. V-Label also bars any product that legally requires GMO labeling, regardless of the GMO's own vegan status.