NATRUE Certification Explained

The NATRUE label guarantees natural or organic formulation; it does not guarantee vegan status. The standard explicitly permits ingredients produced by animals, such as beeswax, lanolin, honey, milk derivatives, and other substances obtained without slaughtering the animal. A NATRUE-certified lip balm, for example, may well contain beeswax, and a certified hand cream may contain lanolin.

The standard does restrict ingredients that require the death of vertebrate animals, so slaughter by-products such as animal collagen or animal fats are generally excluded. This makes NATRUE-certified products more restrictive than conventional cosmetics on animal-derived inputs, but still short of vegan.

On animal testing, NATRUE requires compliance with the EU cosmetics animal-testing ban and opposes animal testing globally, which is why the certification is commonly grouped with cruelty-free schemes. However, it is not an animal-testing certification in the way Leaping Bunny is: its primary subject matter is ingredient naturalness, not supply-chain testing audits. Vegans should treat the NATRUE logo as a naturalness signal only and verify animal-derived content separately.

NATRUE itself does not perform audits. Certification is carried out by independent third-party certification bodies that NATRUE has approved, which keeps the standard-setter separate from the assessor. The certifier reviews the product formulation, the raw materials and their processing methods, and the manufacturing site, then confirms whether each product meets the criteria for the claimed certification level. Certified products are re-assessed periodically to keep the license valid.

Certification is done at the product level, and NATRUE maintains a public online database where consumers can look up certified products and raw materials. This is a practical verification route: if a product displays the NATRUE logo but does not appear in the database, the claim is worth questioning.

Costs consist of certification body fees plus a label licensing fee to NATRUE that scales with the brand's turnover, a structure intended to keep the scheme accessible to smaller manufacturers. Because the audit focuses on formulation and manufacturing rather than the full upstream supply chain, NATRUE is not considered a supply-chain-verified certification.

NATRUE and COSMOS are the two dominant natural and organic cosmetics standards in Europe, and they occupy the same market niche. Both classify ingredients by origin, both ban synthetic fragrances, silicones, and petroleum-derived ingredients, and both certify through third-party bodies. The main practical differences lie in how each calculates natural and organic content and in regional footprint: COSMOS emerged from a coalition of certifiers including Ecocert, BDIH, and the Soil Association, while NATRUE was founded by manufacturers and is especially prominent in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

Neither standard certifies vegan status. For that, shoppers need a dedicated vegan certification such as The Vegan Society trademark or the V-Label, or a Leaping Bunny mark if the concern is animal testing specifically.

In practice, the strongest signal for a vegan shopper is a product carrying both marks: a NATRUE or COSMOS logo confirming natural formulation, plus a recognized vegan label confirming the absence of animal-derived ingredients. Some European natural brands display this combination on individual vegan products.