How we research.

Last reviewed: 5 July 2026

Who stands behind the work

Before the process, the credentials that frame it:

• ISO 9001-certified quality management. CIG operates an ISO 9001-certified quality management system. Every dossier, review and filing described on this page runs inside that system: documented procedures, records of who did what and when, and scheduled internal review. The certification is independently verifiable through IAF CertSearch; our certificate number is available on request at hello@cosmeticintelligencegroup.com.
• US Agent to the FDA. CIG acts as US Agent for foreign cosmetic facilities registered with the US Food and Drug Administration under MoCRA: the named point of contact the FDA uses for those facilities.
• A state-inspected Responsible Person network. Our EU, UK and Swiss Responsible Person partners operate under the inspection regimes of their home authorities (national market-surveillance bodies in the EU and UK, and the cantonal enforcement laboratories in Switzerland) and work to ISO 22716, the international GMP standard for cosmetics, when holding and verifying client documentation.
• Named, qualified review. Safety conclusions are made by qualified safety assessors, and our published guides carry the name of the person who reviewed them, currently Cassandra Maddocks, chemist and biochemist.

How we research

Every guide and market page on this site follows the same documented process before publication:

• 1. Primary sources first. We start from the regulation text and the responsible authority's own guidance (EUR-Lex for EU law, legislation.gov.uk and GOV.UK for the UK, Fedlex and the FSVO for Switzerland, the FDA and the Federal Register for the United States), never from summaries of them.
• 2. Cross-reference before publication. Each regulatory claim is checked against the primary text and at least one other authoritative source. If a figure or requirement cannot be traced to a primary source, it is either labelled as our professional recommendation or cut.
• 3. Enacted vs. pending, always. We distinguish requirements that are in force from rulemakings that are proposed, delayed or withdrawn, and we label them in the text itself, not in a footnote. A pending rule imposes no obligations, and we say so.
• 4. Named review. Guides are reviewed by a named, qualified safety assessor before publication, and each shows who reviewed it and when.
• 5. Scheduled re-review. Regulatory content is re-reviewed on a recurring cycle and sooner when a rule changes. Pages covering active rulemaking, US MoCRA above all, are checked against FDA announcements more frequently than evergreen content.

Our sources

We prioritise sources in this order, and the higher tiers anchor every important claim:

• Tier 1, regulators and agencies: the European Commission, FDA, OPSS, the Swiss FSVO and SECO, and national market-surveillance authorities.
• Tier 2, legislation and official standards: EUR-Lex, legislation.gov.uk, Fedlex, the US Federal Register and CFR, and ISO standards (including ISO 22716 on GMP).
• Tier 3, scientific and expert review: SCCS opinions, CIR reports and peer-reviewed literature, used for safety and ingredient questions.
• Tier 4, industry bodies and established trade press, used to fill gaps only, never as the anchor for a legal claim.

Each guide lists its primary sources in a Sources box at the end of the article, and every outbound citation links to the primary document rather than a news story about it.

Dates, verification and changes

• Guides display who reviewed them and when they were last reviewed.
• Each guide's Sources box states when its regulatory status was last verified.
• When a material fact changes, the content is corrected, the review date is updated, and the correction is noted. We never update a date without updating the content behind it.

Transparency commitment

• Every regulatory claim on a guide links to its primary source.
• We clearly separate legal requirements from proposals and from our own recommendations.
• Client formulas and data never appear in published content. Where we draw on client work, it is anonymised and used only with consent.
• Corrections are made openly. See our editorial standards for the full corrections policy.

Questions about our process, or something that looks wrong? Write to hello@cosmeticintelligencegroup.com.