B Corp Certification Certification Explained

The Certified B Corporation logo applies to an entire company, not to individual products. It signals that the company met B Lab's threshold for overall social and environmental performance at the time of certification. It does not indicate that any product is vegan, plant-based, or free from animal-derived ingredients.

The B Impact Assessment does not require companies to avoid animal products or animal testing. Dairy producers, meat companies, and brands using wool or leather can and do hold B Corp certification; Ben & Jerry's, a dairy ice cream maker, is a well-known example. For a shopper, the logo is best read as a general indicator of corporate ethics — labor practices, environmental management, governance — rather than a statement about animal welfare or ingredient sourcing.

For vegan-specific assurance, a product-level vegan certification remains necessary, whether alongside or instead of B Corp status.

Vegan and cruelty-free certifications operate at the product or brand level with narrow, specific criteria. The Vegan Society trademark and Vegan Action's Certified Vegan logo verify that a product contains no animal ingredients and involved no animal testing. Leaping Bunny certifies that a brand does not conduct or commission animal testing across its supply chain, but says nothing about ingredients. B Corp, by contrast, evaluates the whole company across governance, workers, community, environment, and customers, with no vegan or animal-testing requirements.

Because these schemes measure different things, they are complementary rather than interchangeable. A company can be a certified B Corp while selling dairy, and a vegan-certified product can come from a company with no broader ethical accreditation. Shoppers who want both plant-based products and broader corporate accountability need to check for each certification separately; some companies hold both, and neither implies the other.

"Certified B Corporation" is often confused with "benefit corporation," but the two are distinct. A benefit corporation is a legal corporate form available in many US states and in analogous versions elsewhere, which obligates directors to consider stakeholder interests. B Corp certification is a voluntary third-party assessment from B Lab, a nonprofit, and is open to companies regardless of legal form. A business can be one, both, or neither.

B Lab operates as a global network, with regional organizations supporting certification in their own markets. The legal accountability requirement is adapted to local company law: in the United States it often involves adopting benefit corporation status where the form is available, while in other jurisdictions companies typically amend their articles or charters to embed stakeholder commitments.

Certified companies exist in more than 80 countries, so the logo is recognizable internationally, though consumer awareness of what it actually covers varies considerably by region.