Animal Testing Policy

Global society is taking steps towards the abolition of animal testing and the Kao Group supports such endeavor.

In our development of cosmetics, we do not and will not conduct animal testing nor do we outsource this task to anyone.*1

  • * 1 This excludes instances where we need to respond to societal expectations to evidence the safety of a product or when required to do so by government agencies in particular countries.

For products other than cosmetics, our policy is to not conduct animal testing unless it cannot be avoided due to lack of availability of alternative methods, regulatory requirements or other similar reasons.*2

  • * 2 If testing on animals is unavoidable, we keep such testing to a minimum following the principles of animal welfare of the 3Rs (Replacement, Reduction and Refinement).

Ensuring the safety of our products is our utmost priority and, in this regard, we have established and observe the Kao Group safety standards. In accordance with such standards, Kao widely collects safety data, makes use of its safety information database that contains the knowledge accumulated over many years and adopts alternative methods to animal testing as much as possible. After ensuring product safety through the above, we conduct further testing of the product in actual usage settings.

We have been working on the development of alternative methods to animal testing since the late 1980s. We believe that alternative methods should be official test methods that can be used globally. In this regard, Kao is actively working with research institutions globally for the development of alternative methods to be adopted as international guidelines. We are also a member of the project to develop alternative methods to animal testing of Cosmetics Europe. We will continue to proactively work on the development of alternative methods to animal testing in cooperation with industry associations, other companies and other related third parties globally.

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