ETKO Vegan Standard

What is the ETKO Vegan Standard?

The ETKO Vegan Standard is a compliance verification system specifically designed by ETKO to address the rapidly growing and conscious vegan consumer base. This standard is applicable not only to food products but also to a wide range of goods, including textiles, cosmetics, personal care items, and detergents. Its primary objective is to prove, through independent auditing, that a product’s entire lifecycle—from seed and field to raw material processing and final packaging—involves no animal exploitation, uses no animal-derived ingredients, and is manufactured using cruelty-free methods.

Key Technical Criteria of ETKO Vegan Certification

The vegan standard is built upon strict ingredient analysis and supply chain traceability. The technical framework can be summarized as follows:

• Prohibition of Animal-Derived Ingredients:

  • The use of direct animal components such as meat, fish, or poultry in product formulations or manufacturing processes is strictly prohibited.

  • No indirect animal by-products are allowed, including milk, eggs, honey, beeswax, propolis, lanolin, carmine (insect-derived dye), silk, animal gelatin, or leather.

• Processing Aids and Cross-Contamination:

  • One of the biggest threats to vegan claims is the use of non-vegan processing aids. Agents such as bone char (used for sugar refinement) or isinglass/animal gelatin (used for clarifying wine and juice) are completely banned under the standard.

  • If a facility produces both vegan and non-vegan items, strict measures must be implemented to prevent cross-contamination. This requires dedicated production lines or rigorous, verified washing and cleaning procedures to ensure no animal residue touches the vegan products.

• No Animal Testing (Cruelty-Free):

  • Under no circumstances can the final certified product, or any of the raw ingredients it contains, be tested on animals. The entire development and manufacturing process must adhere strictly to "Cruelty-Free" principles.

Who this standard is for

ETKO Vegan is for manufacturers that need a product claim of no animal-derived ingredients or materials. Typical scopes are cosmetics, detergents/cleaning products, and textiles or finished goods where the standard’s product list applies. It is a composition and contamination-control standard. It is not a cruelty-free / no-animal-testing certificate.

What is certified

• Recipe or bill-of-materials review for animal-derived ingredients and materials (for example tallow, carmine, beeswax, lanolin, collagen, keratin, silk, wool, leather, down)
• Cross-contamination controls where vegan and non-vegan products share equipment or lines
• Supplier declarations and specifications for each raw material or component
• Product categories in the standard’s scope: cosmetics, detergents, and applicable textiles / finished articles
• Labelling of vegan-certified SKUs and change control when a recipe or supplier changes
• Processing aids and carry-over that can introduce animal origin even if they are not listed as “ingredients” on pack

What this standard does not cover

• Cruelty-free or no-animal-testing certification (vegan composition is not the same as “not tested on animals”)
• Organic, natural, COSMOS, or other chemical/agricultural claims
• Farm animal-welfare certification of livestock (that is not a vegan composition claim)
• Food or pharmaceutical vegan claims unless those categories are explicitly in the certified product scope

Questions buyers and operators usually ask

Is vegan the same as cruelty-free?

No. Vegan addresses whether animal-derived substances are in the product or on the material. Cruelty-free addresses animal testing of the product or ingredients. A formula can be vegan and still have a testing history, or cruelty-free and still contain beeswax, carmine, or lanolin. Buyers who want both must specify both; this page covers vegan composition only.

Can we run vegan and non-vegan SKUs on the same filling or dyeing line?

Yes if validated cleaning or changeover prevents carry-over of animal-derived residues at a level the standard treats as contamination. Shared tanks, hoses, and fabric dye lots are typical risk points. Without a documented changeover, a vegan claim on the following batch is not defensible.

Do beeswax, lanolin, or carmine fail vegan?

Yes. They are animal-derived. Honey, shellac, silk, wool, leather, down, and collagen fail for the same reason. Plant-wax or mineral-wax substitutes need supplier origin evidence; “natural wax” on an SDS is not enough if the origin could be animal.

If a textile coating is vegan, can the fabric still contain wool or silk?

No for a vegan-certified article: the certified product includes fibres, trims, and coatings in scope. A vegan finish on a wool garment does not make the garment vegan. Define the article boundary (fibre, coating, accessory) in the application so the claim matches what is audited.

What to have ready before the audit

• Full BOM, INCI list, or fibre/trim composition for each SKU to be claimed
• Supplier vegan or composition declarations plus SDS/specifications for every raw material
• Cross-contamination and cleaning validation for shared equipment
• List of ambiguous inputs (glycerin, stearic acid, oleic acid, colourants, enzymes) with documented origin
• Artwork and claim text for vegan labelling
• Change-control procedure for new suppliers, substitute ingredients, and new SKUs

Frequent findings

• Printing cruelty-free language from a vegan certificate, or treating the two as interchangeable
• Animal-derived processing aids or filter media not shown on the ingredient list
• Glycerin, stearates, or colourants of unspecified animal versus vegetable origin
• Shared tanks or dye vessels without validated cleaning between non-vegan and vegan runs
• Silk, wool, leather, or down remaining in a “vegan textile” line that was never removed from scope