Short answer: no. Tallow is rendered beef fat, so it is not vegan and it is not vegetarian. If you came here to check before buying, that is the whole answer, and we would rather you find it out from us in one sentence than from an ingredient list after the jar arrives.
This question lands in our inbox most weeks, usually from someone who has seen tallow all over their feed and wants to know whether it is for them before they read another word about it. So here is the plain version, what is actually in each of our jars, and the one thing we make that has no animal ingredients in it at all: our Pure Glow Face Serum, which is eight organic plant oils and contains no tallow.
We are Jeremie and Megan Hannon. We make our whipped tallow by hand in small batches in Loomis, California, and we are a real family rather than a brand team, which is why you are getting a straight no instead of a paragraph of hedging.
Why tallow is not vegan
Tallow is fat from cattle, melted down slowly and strained until it sets into a smooth solid. That is the entire process and there is no plant version of it. A vegan diet and a vegan beauty routine both exclude animal-derived ingredients, and rendered beef fat is about as animal-derived as an ingredient gets.
Our tallow comes from grass-fed, grass-finished cattle raised on 150-plus acres of regeneratively farmed land, with no herbicides, pesticides or vaccines, and we render it in small batches ourselves. We think that sourcing matters a great deal. It does not make the fat any less animal, and we are not going to blur that line to keep you reading.
Is tallow vegetarian?
No. Vegetarians who avoid meat but still eat dairy and eggs sometimes assume a fat is in a different category, the way butter is. It is not. Tallow comes from the body of the animal, not from milk, so if your line is drawn at animal flesh then tallow sits on the far side of it.
Beeswax is worth naming for the same reason, and it applies to us. Our Lip Relief contains beeswax alongside the tallow, so that one has two animal ingredients in it rather than one. A product being mostly plant-based does not make it vegan, ours included. Read the full list, not the front of the label.
What is actually in our jars
We would rather show you than describe. Checked against our live catalogue today:
- Unscented Whipped Tallow. Our grass-fed tallow and organic coconut oil. Nothing else. This is the only jar we describe as two ingredients.
- Our scented whipped tallows. The same tallow and organic coconut oil, plus essential oils. The scent in every one of them comes only from third-party-tested essential oils, never from fragrance oil.
- Lip Relief. Our tallow, organic jojoba oil and beeswax. That is two animal ingredients, so it is the furthest thing from vegan on our shelf.
- Pure Glow Face Serum. Eight organic oils and no tallow at all: argan, rosehip, jojoba, marula, castor, sea buckthorn, red raspberry seed, and wheat germ for its vitamin E. No essential oils either.
So of everything we make, the serum is the one with no animal ingredient in it.
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If you want plant oils only Pure Glow Face Serum Eight organic plant oils, no tallow, no essential oils. Made by hand in Loomis by the two of us. If it is not right for your skin, write to us and we will make it right. |
Plant oils are not a consolation prize
We want to be clear about this, because a tallow company writing about vegan skincare could easily drift into running plant oils down. We are not going to, and we could not do it honestly if we tried. Argan, rosehip, jojoba and sea buckthorn are excellent at what they do, which is why we built an entire product out of eight of them and sell it alongside the balm. If you are plant-only by conviction or by diet, you are not settling for less. You are choosing a different kind of fat.
What we cannot offer you is a vegan version of the balm. A whipped body balm made without animal fat is a different formulation with different problems to solve, and we have not made one. If that is what you are looking for, you will need to look past us for it, and we would rather say so than sell you the serum as though it were the same thing.
What about cruelty-free?
People mean two different things by that phrase, so here is how each one lands.
If you mean a product with no animal ingredient, then our whipped tallow is not it, and the serum is. If you mean testing on animals, we are not going to put a certification-style label on this page that we have not earned. Write to us and ask and a real person in Loomis will answer you directly. We would rather give you a straight answer in an email than a badge on a blog post.
A note on what is missing from this page
You would normally find a customer review beside the recommendation above. We have left that space empty on purpose. We have a small number of reviews on our store, all of them real and all of them about how a product feels or smells, and not one of them speaks to the question you came here with. Rather than borrow an unrelated quote and dress it up as relevant, we are telling you it is not there yet.
So should you buy anything from us?
If you are vegan, the honest shortlist from our shelf is one item long, and it is the serum. If you keep animal products out of your routine but not your pantry, the same answer holds.
And if you landed here doing due diligence rather than ruling tallow out, the jar most people start with is the Unscented Whipped Tallow, which is the two-ingredient one. We have written about what the sourcing behind it does and does not let us claim in what makes a skincare brand genuinely accountable, and if you are comparing tallow against a kitchen oil, tallow vs. olive oil covers that one.
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Common questions
Is beef tallow vegan? No. It is rendered fat from cattle, and there is no plant-derived equivalent of it.
Is tallow vegetarian? No. It comes from the animal's body rather than from milk, so it falls outside a vegetarian routine as well.
Do you make anything without animal ingredients? Yes, one thing: the Pure Glow Face Serum, which is eight organic plant oils and contains no tallow and no essential oils.
Is there a vegan version of your whipped tallow? No, and we are not going to pretend the serum is one. A plant-based body balm is a different formulation and we have not made one.
Is tallow a byproduct? The fat comes from cattle raised for meat on the land we have described, and we render it ourselves in small batches rather than buying it in. We will leave the larger argument about what that does or does not mean to you.
Where to start
Plant-only: the Pure Glow Face Serum, or see it on its own in the face serum collection. Not plant-only and still curious: the Unscented jar, a pea-sized scoop at a time, for a week. Either way there are two people in Loomis on the other end of the contact form, and we answer our own email.
This article is educational and not medical advice. Pure Lifestyle products are cosmetics made to support the look and feel of healthy, comfortable skin. They are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent eczema, psoriasis, or any medical condition. If you're managing a skin condition, we recommend working with your healthcare provider.