The Test Waived: China and Imported Cosmetics

From 1 May 2021 an ordinary cosmetic made outside China could go on sale there without first being tested on animals in a laboratory approved by the Chinese regulator — provided its maker could produce the right certificate.^[1][2]

One importer called the change a “game changer”.^[3] Read closely, it was a waiver with conditions, and the conditions decided how far it reached.

“For a long time in the past,” in the words of a regulatory information service that advises companies on the Chinese market, “cosmetic companies were obliged to utilize NMPA-approved labs to perform animal tests on their cosmetic finished products or ingredients even if they had already been assessed as ‘safe’ and marketed in other countries.” Results from non-animal methods were unlikely to be accepted by the regulator’s reviewers.^[4] The NMPA is China’s National Medical Products Administration.

The requirement kept some companies out altogether. The same service calls it “a major stumbling block” for overseas cruelty-free brands.^[4] The Australian group BWX, whose skincare and makeup brands included Sukin, had opted out of the Chinese market “over what was deemed unethical and unnecessary testing”, reaching Chinese buyers through daigou resellers and cross-border e-commerce instead.^[5] Products made in China had been treated differently since 30 June 2014, when animal testing became avoidable for domestic ordinary cosmetics backed by reliable safety assessments.^[4][5]

On 4 March 2021 the NMPA released its finalised Provisions for Management of Cosmetic Registration and Notification Dossiers, and with them the change: from 1 May, imported general cosmetics were exempt from animal testing.^[6] Business of Fashion reported the notice, as posted on the agency’s website, the next day.^[7]

Two conditions came with it. The maker had to hold a certificate of good manufacturing practice issued by the government of the country or region where it was based, and the product’s safety assessment had to be able to prove its safety in full.^[6] “General” or “ordinary” cosmetics were, in one report’s gloss, beauty products without active ingredients — not, for instance, anti-acne creams.^[8]

Three kinds of product were still tested: those for infants and children, those using a new cosmetic ingredient during its three-year monitoring period, and those from a notifier, responsible person or manufacturer listed as a key target for supervision under the NMPA’s rating system.^[9]

Whole categories stood outside the waiver. It applied to general cosmetics; the “special” cosmetics, a class that includes perms, hair dyes and freckle-removing or whitening products, were not covered. And it concerned testing before sale. After sale, the regulatory service notes, animal testing “has not been explicitly excluded from post-market testing methods by the regulatory authorities”, though in its experience it had not been used in post-market surveillance for years, and a company could withdraw a product from the shelves rather than see it tested on animals.^[10]

The hurdle was paper. The certificate had to be issued by the competent authority of the government where the product was made, “rather than associations or chambers of commerce”, and had to reflect the government’s actual supervision of the entire manufacturing process.^[12] Where no such authority issued one, the waiver could not be used: cosmetics without a recognised certificate were still to be tested on animals.^[12]

That was BWX’s position in March 2021. Its chief executive called the change a game changer — more than 90 per cent of the Chinese market, he said, lay in domestic sales channels the company could not reach — and wrote to the Australian government to get alignment on what counted as a good-manufacturing certificate.^[13]

China went on adding methods it would accept in place of animals. Its Safety and Technical Standards for Cosmetics took in several internationally recognised non-animal methods, the bovine corneal opacity and permeability assay and the fluorescein leakage test among those accepted or proposed. On 29 July 2026 the NMPA finalised measures extending the waiver to some special cosmetics — perms, non-oxidative hair dyes and physical whitening products — and to general cosmetics using new ingredients, children’s products excepted.^[14]

In the United States the question had a simpler answer. The FDA’s page on the cosmetics law of 2022 states that companies must keep records supporting the safety of their products, and that animal testing “is not a requirement for marketing a cosmetic product.”^[15]

How many foreign brands used the waiver, and how quickly, is not recorded in the sources used here. It depended on governments abroad issuing the certificate it asked for, and the reports of March 2021 show at least one company still waiting to learn whether its own would.^[16]

Nor do they settle what happens after sale. The regulatory service says post-market testing on animals was not explicitly ruled out but had not been used in practice for years; this account has no independent check on either statement.^[17] Much of the detail here comes from that service, which advises companies selling into China, and from business reporting; the NMPA’s own notice, in Chinese, was not read for this account.