REACH - cruel and unscientific mass animal testing

Mass animal testing

The European Commission has proposed a new EU Chemicals Policy for existing chemicals (chemicals on the market before 1981), which involves the largest mass animal testing programme in Europe's history, consigning many millions of laboratory animals to hideous poisoning experiments. Without the use of non-animal (in vitro) alternatives the Commission's testing programme will cause enormous animal suffering to a variety of species including mice, rats, hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits, birds, fish, mini-pigs and dogs. Typical examples are tests for carcinogenicity where animals, usually rats and mice, are used in life-time feeding studies to test for substances which cause cancer. Teratogenicity testing for birth defects are also commonly used, where chemicals are forced into pregnant animals to study the effects on the foetus or offspring. Shorter-term toxicity testing will also be used. These cruel tests can cause animals to suffer convulsions, severe abdominal pain, seizures, tremors, and diarrhoea; they may bleed from the eyes, mouth or genitals, vomit uncontrollably, become paralysed, lose kidney function and fall into coma.

Animal toxicity (poisoning) testing is cruel, scientifically unreliable and cannot be used to properly predict how human beings will react to a chemical. Critical differences in anatomy, physiology, metabolism and biochemistry make extrapolation of results from one species to another at best unreliable and at worst dangerous. Most of the animal tests still used today have never been scientifically validated to prove their accuracy, relevance and repeatability, and some have even failed retrospective validation. By contrast non-animal (in vitro) alternative techniques are more ethical, reliable and often faster and cheaper to perform. Animal experiments should be eliminated from the testing regimes that will result from the European Commission's proposed EU Chemicals Policy, and replaced with in vitro alternatives. As part of this policy, massively increased funding for the fast-track development and validation of priority in vitro tests is key. This would both encourage innovation and benefit all stakeholders concerned with human safety, environmental protection, animal welfare and consumer confidence.

Update April 2007

After six years of negotiations between EU Commission, Parliament and Council the REACH directive came into force in 2007. Stakeholders from industry, environmental and consumer protection groups and animal rights groups lobbied hard for their objectives. The outcome for the animals could have been better, but also could have been worse. The EU missed the chance to launch a completely new way of chemicals testing, a way which doesn't rely on outdated, unreliable animal test data.

But due to the intensive work of many animal welfare and rights groups across Europe major achievements for the animals could be implemented in REACH. When the EU Commission presented its White Paper in 2001 animal tests and non-animal testing methods were not even mentioned. Over the years this became a major issue high up on the agenda of the EU. ECVAM, the European Validation Centre is currently validating 40 alternative testing methods and the validation time of normally ten years could be reduced to five years.

Despite massive resistance from the industry a mandatory data sharing could be implemented in the REACH Directive. This will prevent double testing and force the companies to share existing data. In this way millions of animal lives will be saved. Another major achievement of the animal welfare groups is the 45-days scrutiny period. Chemical companies will have to make their testing proposals public to interested stakeholders. These can then check if the required data is already available from other sources.

Doctors Against Animal Experiments joined an Europe-wide campaign by the ECEAE to reach an animal-free REACH. We contributed several scientific statements, ran a public campaign and collected signatures. Although the Directive is now in force, our work is not finished. We will continue campaigning towards increased funding of non-animal research.

Further information The REACH chance - 45 days to save animals >>