The Organic Consumers Association and a triumvirate of like-minded personal-care brands are leveraging recent court proceedings and the recommendation of the National Organic Standards Board in a complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, claiming rampant organic "fraud.

Lack of validated, regulatory-accepted methods for evaluating complex chemical safety endpoints without animal testing is quickly becoming a problem for industries and stakeholders beyond the cosmetics sector. Momentum is building to drive alternatives development as European authorities set their sights on an animal-free chemicals assessment future.

The Environmental Working Group’s annual sunscreen report finds that one in four products evaluated meet its standards for protection and ingredient avoidance, fairly consistent with the past three years but still worse than 2019. This year, “gold standard” sunscreen products bear the nonprofit’s “Verified” mark.