About Us

(updated September 2007)

The Cruelty Free Shop has been running for over five years now and I still enjoy running it as much as I did in that first year. Someone said to me recently “it must be so tedious packing all those orders, I thought about it and realised that I have never once been bored; I still enjoy every minute of it! One unexpected benefit of having the shop has been the amount of wonderful new friends I’ve met along the way. Being in daily contact with so many caring people has restored my faith in people. It can be very lonely being a vegan surrounded by meat-eaters but thanks to the shop I haven’t been lonely for years!

My original motivation for starting the shop was to make genuinely cruelty free products readily available in a quick and easy way for people who care about animals. I had often heard people say “I try to buy cruelty free products” but “it’s too hard”, “I can’t find them” or “how do I know which really are cruelty free?”. The Cruelty Free Shop removes all those objections; our products are all certified cruelty free. Of course a product can’t be truly cruelty free unless it is vegan so all our products are 100% vegan as well.

Although the shop is still very much my main focus, last year I decided I wanted to do more to help animals and asked Animal Liberation NSW if I could run Sydney’s first all vegan, Cruelty Free Living Festival for them, luckily they said yes. My goal with the festival is to educate the public about practical things they can do every day to reduce animal suffering. For more information about this year’s festival visit www.crueltyfreefestival.org.au.

Every month I do fundraising for an animal rescue group by featuring one of their homeless animals on the shop’s home page. Thanks to the generosity of Cruelty Free Shop customers, we have raised around $9000 for these groups over the past couple of years (the Cruelty Free Shop also contributes each month):

Animal Rights and Rescue Group
Horse Rescue
The Donkey Shelter
NSW Animal Rescue
A Poultry Place
Monika’s Doggie Rescue
World League for the Protection of Animals
Sydney Pet Rescue and Adoption
Edgar’s Mission
Friends of the Hound

I also support animal rights organisations by regularly donating Gift Hampers for use as raffle prizes, some of the groups who have received these hampers (some multiple times) are: Animal Liberation NSW, Animal Liberation Victoria, Choose Cruelty Free Australia, Aduki Magazine, Animals Asia, Australian Association for Humane Research, Human Battery Cage Project, Vegan Society.

Thank you for visiting my shop and remember….Every one of us can make a difference!

About us (February 2002)
The idea to start the Cruelty Free Shop was a result of years of trying to find reliable and reputable suppliers of Cruelty Free products which always proved difficult and time consuming.

I decided to launch the online Cruelty Free Shop in order to make Cruelty Free products accessible, in a quick and easy way, to people who care about animals – a one stop Cruelty Free shop.

I believe that there are a lot of people out there who are aware of the barbarity of animal testing and I hope to spread the word so these people can show they care in a practical way - by only purchasing certified cruelty free products. Unfortunately the only way to get the message through to manufacturers that animal testing is unacceptable is to boycott their products, thereby hitting them where it hurts – in their profits!

Recently there has been much talk in the press about “truth in labelling”, specifically with regards to claims of environmental friendliness of products. This same issue causes a problem with claims regarding animal testing.

Although any manufacturer can print “not tested on animals” on their labels, this does not offer any guarantees. Even if the manufacturer does not conduct animal tests themselves, they may have utilised external laboratories or the ingredients used in their products may have been tested by their suppliers.

All our products have been certified Cruelty Free by the independent, non-profit organisation Choose Cruelty Free Australia. CCF’s accreditation criteria are amongst the most stringent in the world. You can purchase products from manufacturers accredited by CCF safe in the knowledge that they have not been tested on animals by the manufacturer, their agents or their suppliers.

In keeping with the cruelty free concept I decided to stock only Vegan products (ie no animal derived ingredients) as any industry that harvests animal derivatives involves further cruelty and exploitation.

I hope you find this shop useful. Please tell your friends how easy it is to purchase cruelty free products now via our online shop. I welcome any feedback or suggestions you may have so please e-mail me at jessica@crueltyfreeshop.com.au.

Jessica