We’re delighted to announce that it just became harder for companies to carry out cruel EU chemical tests.
Cruelty Free International and our European Coalition to End Animal Experiments have successfully forced the European Chemicals Agency to only approve animal tests for chemicals where no alternative approach exists.
A key principle of EU chemical regulations, known as REACH, is that animal tests should only be conducted as a last resort, when all other avenues have been explored.
Yet the chemical agency has been swerving this commitment by only rejecting animal test proposals if the data they were supposedly meant to find already existed or was not needed.
We have complained to the European Ombudsman about this shocking interpretation of the law.
And the Ombudsman has now upheld our complaint. It agrees that the European Chemicals Agency must reject an animal testing proposal if there is an alternative way of generating the data or if the company has not given this sufficient thought.
The result should be significantly fewer animal tests.
