Press release

Published: 10 February 2026

The European Parliament has achieved a decisive victory for animal protection and modern science. With the revision of the EU Detergents Regulation adopted on January 20, 2026, a comprehensive ban on animal testing for laundry and cleaning products as well as their ingredients has been introduced. The nationwide organization Doctors Against Animal Experiments (DAAE) welcomes this step as a long-overdue systemic shift toward safe and human-relevant testing.

Until now, countless animals have suffered in painful tests for the approval of household chemicals. The new ban ensures that no animal testing may be conducted for finished products from 2029 onward. Particularly significant is that individual ingredients are now also subject to the strict requirement to use animal-free methods—an approach that paves the way for fully animal-free safety assessments.

The regulation had already been agreed upon with the European Council in June 2025. The animal testing ban was incorporated at the initiative of the European Parliament in response to the more than 1.2 million signatures collected through the European Citizens’ Initiative “Save Cruelty Free Cosmetics.” “The decision by Members of the European Parliament sends a clear signal against outdated and unreliable methods,” explains Dr. Tamara Zietek, Head of Science at DAAE. “Animal experiments are not a gold standard for human health because they fail due to their limited transferability to humans. Real safety for human health can only be achieved through modern, animal-free technologies that specifically reflect human biological responses instead of relying on misleading ‘animal models.’”

Following formal confirmation by the Council, the new regulation will enter into force 20 days after its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union. For practical implementation, the law provides a transitional period of 42 months, meaning the new rules will become binding from mid-2029. This timeframe is intended to allow manufacturers to fully transition their testing strategies to animal-free methods.

This success demonstrates that phasing out animal experiments is politically achievable when there is a commitment to innovation. Despite this partial achievement, Doctors Against Animal Experiments criticizes the fact that many ingredients may still be tested in cruel experiments under the EU chemicals regulation REACH. “Together with our umbrella organization, the European Coalition to End Animal Experiments (ECEAE), we are therefore actively working to ensure that the upcoming revision of REACH closes these loopholes consistently,” Zietek explains.

As a result of the European Citizens’ Initiative for a Europe free from animal experiments—co-initiated by the ECEAE—the European Commission is currently developing a roadmap to accelerate the transition to animal-free chemical testing. This is the only way to sustainably and consistently prevent that ingredients in cleaning products are still tested on animals, for example under the pretext of occupational safety. “We must use this momentum to consistently implement similar bans in the chemicals regulation (REACH) and in pharmaceutical development,” demands Dr. Zietek, who represents the ECEAE at the EU level. A consistent redirection of public research funding exclusively toward animal-free methods and accelerated validation of non-animal procedures are also necessary. Only by focusing on human-relevant methods can animal protection as well as health and environmental protection in Europe be strengthened in a sustainable manner.

References

Detergents: MEPs revise rules to improve environmental and health protection | News | European Parliament. European Parliament, News, 22.01.2026