Is Lanolin Ethical?
We get asked this more than you'd think. Usually politely, sometimes not, and almost always by someone who has just learned lanolin comes from sheep and isn't sure how they feel about it (which is a totally fair instinct).
Our short answer: yes, ours is, and we can tell you exactly why. The longer answer is that lanolin as a category has a real traceability problem, and it's one of the reasons we started PoiPoi in the first place. We looked at what was on the shelf, found most of it came from nowhere in particular, and thought it could be done properly.
What it actually is
Sheep grow a waxy coating on their wool, the same way your skin produces its own oils. When wool is washed after shearing, that wax comes off the fibres and floats free. That's lanolin.
Nothing is taken from the sheep to get it. The sheep is shorn, the wool is washed, and the wax is what's left in the water. If nobody collected it, it would go down the drain.
Shearing itself isn't the ethical question people assume it is. Domestic sheep have been bred to grow wool continuously and not shed it. Left unshorn they overheat, struggle to move, and become vulnerable to flystrike. Anyone who remembers Shrek, the Merino who hid in a Central Otago cave for six years and emerged under 27 kilograms of fleece, will remember he was famous and also in real trouble. The sheep is being shorn regardless. Whether the wax gets used or wasted has nothing to do with the animal's welfare.
One thing we won't dress up: lanolin is an animal product. If you're vegan, it's out, and we're not going to hide behind the phrase "cruelty-free." That means not tested on animals. It doesn't mean animal-free. Plenty of brands blur those deliberately .
Where the category falls down
Most lanolin on the world market is a commodity. It gets pooled, blended, drummed and sold by the tonne with no origin attached. A brand can print "lanolin" on a label without knowing which country it came from, let alone which farm. That's the norm.
That matters for two specific reasons.
The first is mulesing, the practice of cutting skin from a lamb's backside to prevent flystrike. It's the biggest welfare issue in global wool. It's illegal in New Zealand and legal in Australia, the world's largest wool producer. Country of origin isn't a marketing detail here. It's the whole question.
The second is residues. Sheep get treated for parasites, and those treatments concentrate in exactly one place: the wool grease. Lanolin is where a flock's whole year of chemistry ends up. This isn't an argument against lanolin. It's an argument for knowing which lanolin, and for refining it to a standard that sets hard limits on what's allowed to remain.
Neither of these is solvable by a brand that doesn't know where its supply came from. That's what we mean when we say the category has a problem.
What we do
Our lanolin comes from New Zealand wool, always. Mulesing is off the table by law rather than by promise, and the sheep are grass-fed and pasture-raised because that's simply how farming works here.
It's extracted with warm water at around 70°C and separated in a centrifuge. Warmth and movement, essentially. Then it's lightly purified, filtered, vacuum-dried and gently deodorised to European Pharmacopoeia grade, the standard used for lanolin destined for medical use. EP sets those residue limits we mentioned. It's the reason we can raise the issue openly instead of hoping nobody asks.
We also refine it lightly rather than aggressively, keeping over 95% of its natural wax esters intact. Over-refined lanolin is cheaper to make and doesn't work as well. The pale, almost scent-free wax in our tubes is what light refining looks like.
So, is it ethical?
It depends whose lanolin you're talking about, which is exactly why we bothered to build a brand around the answer.
Lanolin from a traceable New Zealand supply chain, refined to a pharmaceutical standard, made from a wax that would otherwise be washed away from an animal that had to be shorn anyway, sits about as well with us as a skincare ingredient can.
Lanolin bought as an anonymous commodity from wherever was cheapest that quarter is a different product wearing the same name. We didn't want to sell that one.
If you've read this far, you're the kind of person who wants to know what's in the thing before you buy it. That's who we made this for.
So just for you, use code 'READER' for 25% off your first Lanolin Cream. Thank you for caring for the sheep, for New Zealand and where products come from.
