Make-up brand CoverGirl has become the largest brand in the beauty industry to be awarded the globally-recognised Leaping Bunny certification by Cruelty-Free International, an advocacy group which aims to end testing on animals.

This comes as part of a larger long-term partnership between parent company Coty Inc. and Cruelty-Free International, with the beauty conglomerate committing to achieve Leaping Bunny certification for at least one other of their brands by 2020. “As a big beauty company, we wanted to show that our brands can embrace this cause,” Laurent Kleitman, Coty’s president of consumer beauty told WWD. “Consumers want brands with a cause, brands that are thinking beyond the commercial relationship.”

To achieve the Leaping Bunny certification, a company has to eliminate animal testing from every stage of production, from ingredients to suppliers. The demand for brands that don’t test on animals has risen in recent years, with an NPD Group study reporting that US sales of prestige cruelty-free brands increasing by 27 percent between 2017 to 2018.

This move from Coty follows the news last month that Unilever, who own brands such as Dove and Vaseline, have announced support for a worldwide ban on animal testing as part of a collaboration with animal protection group Humane Society International. Although cosmetic testing on animals has been banned in the EU since 2013, research from Cruelty-Free International found that at least 115 million animals are still experimented on worldwide each year, and China requires cosmetics sold in their country to be tested on animals. This means that while some cosmetic brands don’t test on animals themselves, in order to sell to the $3 billion Chinese market, brands must pay for their products to undergo third-party tests on animals. In September the state of California announced it would be banning the sale of animal-tested cosmetics as of 2020. The law is the first of its kind in the US, whose Congress did not pass a federal bill to phase out animal-tested cosmetics last year.

With demand for cruelty-free brands increasing, and social media giving consumers a platform to voice their concerns, we hope that this is just the start of big brands pledging their commitment to turning their back on animal-testing.