FAQ: Compliance Verification for Amazon’s Skin Lightening & Whitening Products Policy

The Amazon certification process includes a testing program and product review to verify quality and safety of Skin Lightening and Whitening Products sold on the Amazon store. Eurofins will partner with you to ensure that the appropriate tests are conducted to align to this Amazon certification program.

The product review includes gathering Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) certificates from your manufacturer, images of the products label, and testing results to review against the Amazon certification standards. Once the testing and product review is completed, a pass or fail status will be reported to the seller and to Amazon directly.

As a seller on Amazon, you will be notified by Amazon of the requirement that your product requires certification. Follow the Amazon process for requesting testing services, which will allow a seller to select the laboratory for the certification.  Should you choose Eurofins, you will be contacted by a Eurofins representative and the path to certification begins.

Eurofins asks that for each ASIN, the seller provide a minimum of 4 unopened retail packages for this program plus any additional bottles / packages that may be needed to meet minimum sample weight requirement of 300 grams.  Samples shall be unopened and sealed as they would be sold. 

The process from when the product arrives, and all the terms have been agreed upon will take about 4 weeks to get the product certified.  Things that may delay the process will be OOS investigations, communication delays, incomplete documents from manufacturers, etc.  Eurofins will do our best to provide accurate and timely results and investigations to all products submitted.

All the Skin Lightening ASINs will require the same service related to the testing and verification scope.

A single price of $ 3,000 USD will apply per ASIN (USA, Canada, and China).

Qualified COAs for microbiology or heavy metal testing, when provided prior to receiving a project quote can reduce the cost of the testing program.  Please note that COAs will be required to be submitted following receipt of the Eurofins welcome email, once selected as your laboratory of choice in Amazon’s Seller Central.

Products submitted under this program will be required to test for microbiological contaminants, heavy metals, and adulterants. 

Eurofins requires direct access to all required documents through the manufacturer or laboratory used in the product being evaluated.  We will not accept any documents (i.e., COAs, GMP certificates, ISO accreditation certificates, etc.) directly from the seller as this introduces high risk for falsified documents and fake COAs.  Please work with your providers (labs, manufacturers) to allow Eurofins a direct conduit to these items so there are no delays in meeting the requirements.

The policy is designed to be conducted at the ASIN level, and therefore the testing and verification are conducted on a representative ASIN.  Therefore, when the ASIN testing and verification is completed, there is not policy requirement to test additional lots.

Any test result that does not meet the acceptance criteria Amazon has set for contaminants or adulterants will fail the certification.  Out of Specification test results will have gone through the retest policy prior to issuance of a failure.  Amazon will be notified of the failed certification and independently take whatever appropriate action is necessary.

If a seller disagrees with the testing results that culminate in a failed certification and are at an impasse, the policy states that you should file an appeal with Amazon directly.

Amazon has determined a path to remediate a failed certification in certain cases.  If your product is eligible for failure resolution, a Corrective and Preventive Action (CAPA) document must be issued to Eurofins by the selling partner which has a sound justification that implementation of the CAPA is expected o to yield a different result. Upon successful resolution, which may require re-certification, Eurofins may change the overall status to PASS in these cases.  Cases which do not have a pathway to resolution include detection of pharmaceutical adulterants and/or a positive result for pathogenic organisms (ex. Staphylococcus aureus, pathogenic Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa).