Our Commitment to Being Cruelty-Free

Since our three serums are all named after animals, a common misconception people have about our brand is that we harm animals to make our products. However, we pride ourselves on being 100% cruelty free! No animals are harmed in the making of our serums! We wouldn’t want to do anything to harm animals: we value and appreciate their importance to our company so much and we would never put them in harm's way. So you may be wondering, how do we get the venom from the bees, the snakes, and the snails without harming them? Let’s dive right in.

For our Snake and Snail Serum, the venoms used in the serums are not actual venom extracted from the animals. Our serums are based in nature, then perfected by science. 

The Snail Serum’s venom is based on the Cone Snail’s venom, which in its natural state, contains harmful components to the skin. This synthetic variation of the Cone Snail’s venom is known as XEP™-018, a clinically proven biomimetic peptide shown to minimize muscle contractions, delivering both instant and visible results which include smoother and more even-toned skin, remarkable reduction in wrinkle depth, visible smoothing of expression lines, and maximum moisture retention. 

The Snail Serum also contains Snail Mucin (Hydraprotectol), which is also synthetic and created in a lab. The glycolic acid found in the snail mucin helps cells produce collagen and elastin, which even out skin tone and smooth its surface, and the glycosaminoglycans derived from the mucin further firm and support wrinkle reduction. 

The Snake Serum is based on the Temple Viper Snake’s venom, but some of the chemical compounds found in the naturally occurring venom were found to be harmful to skin, so we recreated the venom compound without those harmful components. This synthetic variation of the Temple Viper Snake’s venom is known as SYN®-AKE, which effectively targets wrinkles and helps to enhance the elasticity of the skin, ensuring a more firm, toned, and youthful complexion with significant results around the forehead eyes and mouth in as little as 28 days.  


Because both the Snake and Snail Serum are synthetic, both of them are 100% vegan! They do not use any animal products, only a lab-based recreation of their miracle venoms!

Our Bee Serum is the only serum that uses naturally occurring venom. But don’t worry, no bees are harmed in the making of our Bee Serum! When a bee goes to sting someone, as their barbed tip penetrates flesh, guts of the bee are essentially pulled out causing them to die. However,  since we obviously don’t want to harm any bees in the creation of our serums, we came up with a way to extract their venom that doesn’t kill them.

This revolutionary way of venom extraction is done with electrical currents. We use a machine with a glass plate attachment that hooks up to the entrance of hives. This machine sends an electrical current through the glass in order to get the bees attention. The pulsation is so low that only about one in 10,000 bees actually react to the plate, but when they do, they want to protect their hives. Therefore, they come out of the hive and go to sting the plate, but since the glass is impenetrable, when they sting it they do not lose their stingers! The bee who stings the plate is then able to move on healthily, for stinging the plate does not harm them in any way. They leave the venom on the glass plate and then we let it dry, scrape it up, and send it to our lab to be turned into Purified Bee Venom (PBV™). 

Research has proven that PBV™ is a potent combination of enzymes, peptides and amino acids that works on all levels of the skin to encourage naturally occurring cell regeneration, boost collagen formation, accelerate the recovery of damaged skin cells and act as a natural alternative to harsh antibiotic therapy for acne. Bee venom mimics the effects of Botox in the sense that it has the ability to deeply penetrate the skin and instantly make it appear lifted, more plump, and significantly firmer in addition to increasing blood circulation in the area that it is applied to. (Note: although the bees are not harmed in any way while we extract their venom, our Bee Serum is not vegan since we do use the naturally-occuring venom.)

Another ingredient in our Bee Serum, Royal Epigen, is a synthetic variation of bees Royal Jelly.  The reason why we used a synthetic variation of this is because the incredibly nourishing and regenerating natural molecular makeup of Royal Jelly is too large to penetrate skin. However, we knew that Royal Jelly had so many benefits that we needed to mimic it somehow. So, we just adjusted it. Our expert scientists recreated all of the nourishing elements of  Royal Jelly while making it small enough to penetrate the skin. 

We are committed to being cruelty free. We love animals just as much as we love skincare, and we know that the same goes for many of our customers. Although some may be turned off by our use of synthetic compounds in our products rather than using all natural ingredients, we value being cruelty free over being “clean.” To learn more about debunking the stigma around synthetics in skincare, check out our blog post, "Has the Clean Beauty Movement Become a Marketing Ploy? Let's Find Out."

If you have any questions at all on the ingredients found in our serums, please email us at rachel@intoxicatedcosmetics.com.