Cruelty Free Europe: A critical moment for safe chemicals, without animal tests
Tests cause immense suffering for 10 million animals in EU laboratories each year. Many of the animal test methods in use today are decades old and have never been validated to modern standards.
SAM SAUNDERS: Back in 2004, the European Commission estimated that chemical safety tests prompted by the introduction of the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) regulation would use 2.6 million animals. Eighteen years later, things look set to get a lot worse following the publication in 2020 of the Commission’s far-reaching Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability (CSS), which lays out a raft of provisions aiming to better protect humans and the environment from the harmful effects of chemicals… The CSS states that “animals are still required to be used systematically for testing in the field of chemicals”, and Cruelty Free Europe estimates that increased requirements that will be brought in under the CSS will result in millions more animals suffering and dying in new tests for REACH.
Registration of selected polymers alone under REACH could use over 1.5 million animals, and we estimate that, at the very least, 3.6 million animals will be used in new tests attempting to identify and characterize endocrine disruptors. Our worst-case estimate is considerably higher. Options recently considered by the Commission for amending REACH information requirements to enable detection of critical hazards at all production volumes would see an additional two million animals used in new tests for substances already registered under REACH…
Tests cause immense suffering for 10 million animals in EU laboratories each year and short-change all of us. Many of the animal test methods in use today are decades old and have never been validated to modern standards, in other words, their fitness for purpose has never been demonstrated. Unsurprisingly, they often generate untrustworthy, misleading data that provide a poor foundation for regulatory decision-making.
In contrast, modern non-animal methods are demonstrably reliable and relevant. This is evidenced in the field of skin sensitization, where non-animal approaches predict human outcomes with up to 85 percent accuracy, compared to the most widely used animal test, which is just 74 percent accurate… Being faster and cheaper than animal tests, non-animal methods also enable many more chemicals and mixtures to be tested than would be possible with animals…
The EU is, in theory, committed to fully replacing animal testing, with this ‘ultimate goal’ enshrined in the directive governing the use of animals in research and testing. While this goal is echoed by rhetoric within the CSS itself, its defined actions do not tell the same story. Promises made by the CSS set Europe on course to use millions of animals in new chemicals tests and, regrettably, the Commission is showing little interest in changing tack…
The Commission must act urgently to change course. To begin with, the Commission should propose adding the goal of ending reliance on animal testing firmly to the REACH regulation itself, signaling that this really is a priority for the EU. As requested by the European Parliament in September last year,[4] it should develop a strategy for achieving this goal. The Commission could also propose enhancing the European Chemicals Agency’s mandate to give it a more central role in promoting non-animal methods, bringing the agency into alignment with the European Medicines Agency and the European Food Safety Authority, both of which are proactively steering away from animal tests. SOURCE…
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