Canada banned cosmetic animal testing in 2023: what actually changed

For years, Canadian shoppers who cared about animal testing had to rely on logos and promises. In 2023, the federal government wrote the issue into law. The change is real, but it’s narrower than the headlines suggested. Here’s what the ban covers, what it leaves alone, and how to read a label now.

What law changed, and when

The ban wasn’t a stand-alone animal welfare bill. It was tucked into Bill C-47, the Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1, which amended the Food and Drugs Act, the federal law that governs food, drugs, medical devices and cosmetics in Canada.

Bill C-47 received Royal Assent (the final step that makes a bill law) on June 22, 2023. Health Canada announced the change publicly on June 27, 2023. The new sections of the Act came into force on December 22, 2023.

So the ban has been in effect for a while now. The key date to remember is December 22, 2023, because most of the exceptions hinge on it.

What exactly is banned?

The amendments added three prohibitions to the Food and Drugs Act. In plain terms:

• No testing. Nobody may test a cosmetic on an animal in Canada if the test could cause the animal pain, suffering or injury, when the purpose of the test is to meet a cosmetic safety requirement, whether a Canadian one or a foreign one. This is section 16.2 of the Act.
• No selling based on new animal data. Nobody may sell a cosmetic in Canada unless they can establish its safety without relying on data from such a test. This is section 16.1. It’s the part that reaches products made outside Canada, since it doesn’t matter where the test happened.
• No unproven claims. Nobody may put a claim on a label or in an ad that creates the impression the product wasn’t tested on animals after December 22, 2023, unless they hold evidence for it and can hand that evidence to the Minister of Health on request. This is section 16.3.

“Cosmetic” here means what the Food and Drugs Act says it means: products used to clean, improve or alter the skin, hair or teeth, such as moisturizers, shampoos, makeup and deodorants. A product regulated as a drug, like a sunscreen or an anti-dandruff shampoo, falls under different rules.

The exceptions written into the Act

This is where most of the confusion comes from. The selling ban has a list of situations where animal test data can still be used. Health Canada’s guidance document spells them out:

• Data published by the Government of Canada.
• Data that is already public and was not sponsored or carried out by the company, for example results in academic journals.
• Ingredients that are also used in non-cosmetic products, such as drugs, when the animal testing was done to meet those other rules in the same jurisdiction.
• Data generated before December 22, 2023.
• Products that were already on the Canadian market before the ban, as long as they haven’t been reformulated.
• Any other circumstance the government may add by regulation later.

In practice, this means a moisturizer that has been sold in Canada since 2015 and whose ingredients were tested on animals in 2010 is still legal. What isn’t legal is running a new animal test for cosmetic safety, or launching a product whose safety case rests on one.

The ban also leaves other laws alone. Animal testing required under chemical or pharmaceutical regulations, in Canada or elsewhere, isn’t covered. If an ingredient is both a drug active and a cosmetic ingredient, the drug-side testing can still happen and its data can still be used.

What “not tested on animals” now has to mean

Before the ban, “cruelty-free” and “not tested on animals” were marketing phrases with no legal definition in Canada. Now they have a hook in the Food and Drugs Act.

Health Canada’s guidance explains how it reads these claims. An undated claim like “cruelty-free” is assessed as of December 22, 2023. A claim with a date, such as “free from animal testing since 2025”, is assessed from that date, but never earlier than the ban itself. Claims about what a company did before the ban may be passed to the Competition Bureau, the agency that handles misleading advertising under the Competition Act.

What counts as evidence? The guidance lists things like a sworn statement that no testing took place and that safety relies only on permitted data, a system for monitoring suppliers, independent third-party audits, and written procedures showing regular checks. A logo on its own is not evidence.

For you as a shopper, the practical effect is modest but useful: a company making the claim in Canada has to be able to back it up, and Health Canada says it investigates complaints and takes action when the claim is false.

How Canada compares with the European Union

The EU is the usual reference point, and it got there in stages under its Cosmetics Regulation (EC) 1223/2009:

• Testing finished cosmetic products on animals was banned in September 2004.
• Testing cosmetic ingredients was banned in March 2009.
• A marketing ban, meaning no selling of products or ingredients tested on animals anywhere in the world, applied from March 2009 for most health effects, and from March 2013 for the last three (repeated-dose toxicity, reproductive toxicity and toxicokinetics, which is how a substance moves through the body).

Canada’s law arrived almost twenty years after the EU’s first step, but it landed as a single package covering testing, selling and claims. Health Canada’s announcement noted that Canada was joining the EU countries, Australia, the United Kingdom and South Korea, which already had similar prohibitions.

Both systems share the same limits, too. Neither one erases historical data, and neither one stops animal testing done to satisfy chemical safety laws. The EU has spent years funding alternatives to animal tests through its reference laboratory for non-animal methods; Health Canada says it is working with international bodies on the same problem.

What this means when you’re shopping

A few honest takeaways:

• A cosmetic sold in Canada today can’t depend on animal tests run after December 22, 2023. That’s a real floor that didn’t exist before.
• It doesn’t mean every product on the shelf has an animal-free history. Older data and older products are grandfathered in.
• “Not tested on animals” on a Canadian label is now a claim the company must be able to prove. If you doubt one, Health Canada has an online complaint form.
• Third-party certification logos aren’t required by law and aren’t a legal standard, but they can add a layer of supplier checking beyond what the Act demands. We look at those logos in a separate article.

The 2023 change moved Canada from “trust the logo” to “the company must hold the evidence”. That’s a meaningful step. Just keep in mind that the ban looks forward, not back, and that it covers cosmetics, not everything in your bathroom cabinet.