Can block a launchCanadaBeauty & personal care

Saying not tested on animals creates a burden of proof

Canada prohibits making a claim on the label of or in an advertisement for a cosmetic that is likely to create an impression that it was not tested on animals unless the person has evidence that no such testing occurred, and requires that evidence to be produced to the Minister on request.

The phrase means nothing in the United States and is a documented, on-demand evidentiary burden two hours north, so a single North American label is a decision about which regime the copy has to survive.

Limits how to read “Cruelty-free” has no legal definition in the US

92 of a possible 97Tier A, primary document or measured outcome. Nothing at this tier is allowed past 97, however good it looks.

Verified August 5, 2026Rechecked every 365 days, next by August 5, 2027.

Constraint

Held since August 5, 2026A rule, law or policy that limits what you may do or say. The earliest date we are willing to say this held. It may well have been true before that; we do not backdate a record past the evidence we have read. Supported, version 1.

This entry is wrong if

Section 16.3 is repealed, or Health Canada states that a not-tested-on-animals claim carries no evidentiary requirement, or the provision is shown never to have come into force.

Written before the record was published, not after. If you can show this, send it to hello@tryorbt.com and the correction goes on the record with the entry.

Evidence

Tier Aregulation
Department of Justice Canada (Justice Laws Website): Food and Drugs Act, R.S.C., 1985, c. F-27
16.3 (1) No person shall make a claim on the label of or in an advertisement for a cosmetic that is likely to create an impression that the cosmetic was not tested on animals after the day on which this section comes into force unless the person has evidence that no such testing occurred after that day.
Enacted by 2023, c. 26, s. 505. The publisher prints the enacting provision and not the day the section came into force, so the asserted-from date here is the day we read the page rather than a commencement date we did not verify.
Read 2026-08-05 · Open government · page hash cacdd724a800
Tier Aregulation
Department of Justice Canada (Justice Laws Website): Food and Drugs Act, R.S.C., 1985, c. F-27
(2) A person who makes a claim described in subsection (1) shall, on the request of the Minister, provide the Minister with the evidence referred to in that subsection.
Read 2026-08-05 · Open government · page hash cacdd724a800

History

v1createdAugust 5, 2026
Initial entry from primary regulator text, read 2026-08-05. Where the publisher prints an enacting provision without a commencement date, the asserted-from date is the day we read the page rather than a date we did not verify.

Append-only. Nothing in this list is edited or removed once written, including the entries that record our own mistakes. Every change to every record is on the corrections page, and the same log is in entries.json under revisions.

canada
animal-testing
cruelty-free
claims
labelling
compliance
beauty

Cite this entry

“Saying not tested on animals creates a burden of proof”, The Orbt Market Index 0.1.0, entry omr:ca:the-cruelty-free-claim-must-be-evidenced, retrieved September 9, 2026, https://tryorbt.com/markets/entry/ca--the-cruelty-free-claim-must-be-evidenced. Dataset: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22679129

Orbt, "Saying not tested on animals creates a burden of proof," Orbt Market Index, entry omr:ca:the-cruelty-free-claim-must-be-evidenced, verified August 5, 2026, https://tryorbt.com/markets/entry/ca--the-cruelty-free-claim-must-be-evidenced.

@misc{orbt-ca-the-cruelty-free-claim-must-be-evidenced,
  title        = {Saying not tested on animals creates a burden of proof},
  author       = {{Orbt}},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.22679129},
  note         = {The Orbt Market Index 0.1.0 (dataset DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22679129), entry omr:ca:the-cruelty-free-claim-must-be-evidenced. Verified 2026-08-05},
  howpublished = {\url{https://tryorbt.com/markets/entry/ca--the-cruelty-free-claim-must-be-evidenced}},
  license      = {Orbt Index Public Licence. Free to quote and cite; not to redistribute}
}

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Free to quote, cite and act on. Not to resell or redistribute — the sources ask that of us, and each one’s terms are named. Machine-readable: entries.json carries this record under the id omr:ca:the-cruelty-free-claim-must-be-evidenced, with the same evidence and falsifier.

Published free, as reference, without warranty. This is not legal, regulatory, customs, tax or investment advice, and it is not a substitute for reading the primary document, which every record here names, dates and links, precisely so that you can.

We derive from public sources and we do not independently audit them. Where a source says its own records are unverified, that carries through to us. What we do promise is that every figure is recomputed from stored rows, every claim publishes the observation that would overturn it, and every correction goes on the public log. If something here is wrong, tell us and it changes in the open.

Orbt is not affiliated with, endorsed by or acting for Department of Justice Canada (Justice Laws Website). They are cited as sources. Go and read them directly — they are more complete than we are, and they are linked from every record that rests on them.

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