By Jeanne Yacoubou, MS

In August 2025, the National Sanitation Foundation (NSF) debuted its vegan label, one of the hundreds of third-party certifications offered by them in several diverse industries since 1944.

The NSF vegan label certifies many types of products and procedures as meeting all of NSF’s requirements for a vegan designation. The products eligible for NSF’s vegan certification are:

• Foods
• Dietary supplements
• Cosmetics
• Personal care products
• Household products

In November 2025, NSF announced that Michele’s Granola was the first company to receive NSF’s vegan certification for its granola and muesli products.

According to NSF’s website, their vegan label applies to:

• Ingredients
• Processing aids
• Food contact packaging

NSF also states on their website that their label ensures supply chain verification and that standard operating procedures are in place for proper storage and handling of vegan ingredients. The certification also requires:

• Cleaning and sanitation to prevent contamination or commingling with non-vegan substances
• Employee training
• Traceability and recall
• Complaint handling
• Compliance monitoring with technical reviews

Q&A with NSF

The VRG asked Carey Allen, Director of Food Claims at NSF, several questions about the NSF label. Here is our Q&A email exchange from January 2026:

Q: What is your working definition of the term “vegan” as it applies to food and beverages?

A: NSF P543: Vegan and Cruelty-Free Products (NSF P543) includes specific requirements for vegan products. Ingredients, processing aids and food contact packaging material used in or on products labeled as “vegan” must not be derived from animals nor contain animal ingredients at any amount. Products may not contain animal-derived GMOs and must not be subject to animal testing. Eligible products under NSF P543 include foods, dietary supplements, cosmetics, personal care products, and household products.

Q: Do you base vegan certification solely on an ingredients list supplied by a food company? If more is involved, please elaborate.

A: Products certified by NSF as vegan undergo a strict technical review. The certification process involves key documentation, reviewing not just the product ingredients, processing aids, and packaging, but also product labels, the manufacturing facilities and standard operating procedures.

Q: For vegan certification, do you rely on a company’s statements from their ingredient suppliers about processing aids? If more is involved, please explain.

A: NSF reviews all ingredients and processing aids as part of the certification process. We review the source of each element to ensure it complies with the standard, review manufacturing supplied documentation such as specification sheets and/or certificates of analysis, and each ingredient and processing aid manufacturer completes a compliance declaration or provides a current third-party vegan certificate. This review also applies to contact packaging manufacturers.

Q: Would you certify foods and beverages manufactured using animal genes via precision fermentation as their sole animal input as “vegan”?

A: No.

Q: Would you certify food grown in labs using animal cells as “vegan”?

A: No.

Q: How is your vegan certification different from other vegan certifications?

A: NSF vegan certification includes the analysis and control of ingredients and processing aids from production, procurement and handling to manufacturing, distribution and consumption of the finished product.

NSF vegan certification not only involves a thorough review of each ingredient and processing aid but also includes a review of the manufacturing facility. Manufacturing facilities are required to have policies and procedures in place to ensure that compliance is maintained with NSF’s Vegan Certification Protocol.

A standard operating procedure (SOP) on ingredient and processing aid approval must address vegan integrity of raw materials. A SOP for the handling and storage of ingredients, processing aids, and products must include measures to eliminate cross-contamination and commingling of vegan and non-vegan ingredients and processing aids; and clear identification and segregation of ingredients, processing aids, and finished products that are and are not vegan.

SOPs for cleaning and sanitation must include a risk assessment to identify potential contamination risks, a cleaning schedule, and a method for evaluating the efficacy of cleaning procedures, if the facility is not dedicated vegan. All employees at the manufacturing facility are required to receive vegan training. Other SOPs reviewed ensure there are procedures in place for traceability and recall, as well as complaint handling. Any product that has been subject to animal testing at any time, including but not limited to during research and development, is prohibited.

To maintain NSF’s vegan certification, operations that have products certified as vegan with NSF must undergo an annual review.

Q: You state in your certification protocol that evidence of vegan integrity could be a current third-party vegan certificate. Which third-party certifications would you consider legitimate and treat as evidence of vegan integrity?

A: This list may evolve through time, so as certificates are submitted, the certification program is evaluated to determine compliance with our vegan program.

Q: Are you able to identify any specific vegan certifications that you would accept when determining the “vegan integrity” of a product you have been asked to certify? If you accept another certification as evidence of vegan integrity, do you stop there and declare the product as NSF-certified, too, or do you conduct your own review as well before making your declaration? If you conduct your own review, then how is the determination of vegan integrity as declared by another certifier relevant?

A: The list of acceptable vegan certificates is likely to change over time, and vegan certificates are evaluated as they are submitted as evidence of compliance. Many products are multi-ingredient. NSF requires complete ingredient and processing aid information for all products seeking vegan certification. While an ingredient or processing aid may be approved because it is certified vegan, we would still require information to verify the compliance of all other ingredients and processing aids used in or on the final product seeking certification.

Q: Do you do onsite visits as part of the certification process, reviewing work logs while there and cross-referencing them with documents you had been previously sent by the company? If so, are the visits announced or unannounced?

A: No, we do not conduct onsite audits.

The contents of this blog posting, our website and our other publications, including Vegan Journal, are not intended to provide personal medical advice. Medical advice should be obtained from a qualified health professional. We often depend on product and ingredient information from company statements. It is impossible to be 100% sure about a statement, info can change, people have different views, and mistakes can be made. Please use your best judgment about whether a product is suitable for you. To be sure, do further research or confirmation on your own.

For more ingredient information, see https://www.vrg.org/ingredients/index.php

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