Dear Miss Beauty Nerd,
I see you have a chemistry degree and know a lot about beauty products, so I thought perhaps you’ll be able to answer my question. I really like Bioderma cleanser and creams, I’ve recently discovered them but I have one concern. Perhaps you know if their products contain any animal derived ingredients? Like lanolin, or some strange ones that can hide under a chemical name? Pharmacy ladies cannot answer me this and the company ignores my e-mail. Hoping to hear from you soon. Thanks.

Hi K,
That’s a very good question! I assume if you are a pet lover like me, you want to avoid animal-derived ingredients as much as possible. Am I right? Unfortunately, there is no easy way to tell whether certain ingredients are animal-derived or plant-derived. An ingredient like lanolin is less ambiguous. It is most certainly animal-derived. If the creams and cleansers contain lanolin, you would see it listed explicitly as such in their ingredient list. However, ingredients such as glycerin or squalane can either be animal-derived or plant-derived and many companies do not specify which origin they are derived from.

That’s unfortunate that you were not able to get a hold of anyone at Bioderma to answer the question for you as they are the only ones that would know the answer! I may have a contact there, so let me do some digging around and see if I can get a response for you. If you want to ensure that you are using products that are cruelty free, a good resource is Leaping Bunny where all the beauty brands have been certified not to contain animal-derived ingredients. I hope this helps!

xoxo,