Legislative Advocacy

The Handcrafted Soap and Cosmetic Guild (HSCG) is a non-profit trade association for small businesses handcrafting soaps and cosmetics and the handcrafted soap and cosmetic industry as a whole. The HSCG works to provide legislative advocacy for all soap and cosmetic handcrafters at both the state and federal level.

Industry Background

The handcrafted soap and cosmetic industry is comprised of small and emerging businesses. These businesses are largely women-owned companies (over 95%) that average 1-3 employees. While the size of each handcrafted soap and cosmetic business is quite small, the number of these companies well exceeds 250,000 nationwide and industry-wide employment estimates are over 750,000.

The HSCG supports current cosmetic legislation that makes it illegal to manufacturer an unsafe, adulterated or misbranded product and agrees with the FDA and other industry experts that U.S. manufactured cosmetics are among the safest consumer products sold in the United States.

The HSCG is deeply committed to supporting the FDA’s efforts in substantiating safe cosmetic ingredients. If an ingredient is not safe, handcrafted soap and cosmetic businesses want to know and will not use it in their products.

Handcrafted soap and cosmetic businesses do not invent new ingredients. These businesses take ingredients that have already been deemed safe and blend them into small batches of custom, handcrafted products. The vast majority of ingredients used by handcrafted soap and cosmetic businesses are food grade and can be found in any grocery store.

Federal Legislation

At a Federal level, at least one bill affecting the handcrafted soap and cosmetic industry has been introduced every year since 2008. TTe HSCG continually monitors for legislation that could affect the handcrafted soap and cosmetic industry and has been working to make our industry known in the legislative arena. We are becoming a recognized stakeholder in matters concerning the handcrafted soap and cosmetic industry and as such have been able to give valuable input to the legislators in Washington DC.

Debra Carnahan, of Carnahan Global Consulting, has been retained to represent the HSCG in Washington, DC. Part of our strategy has included several visits to DC to meet with Members of Congress who are, will be, or could be active players in any future legislation. Our goal is to educate them on the issues facing our industry and our position regarding potential cosmetic legislation.

See Federal Legislation for details on any current legislation

Federal Regulations

Regulations are the implementation of any legislation passed by Congress and approved into law. The process for implementing new regulations or changing existing regulations is lengthy and detailed and has many opportunities for input from concerned parties. The HSCG monitors potential regulation changes or implementations and provides input when needed to ensure that the needs of our industry are addressed.

In April, 2019, the HSCG submitted a Citizen Petition to the FDA to update the FDA labeling regulations concerning the business name and address requirement. For more details see What We Are Doing.

Further Information

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