1,300 Animals Potentially Saved After Appeal Ruling Agrees With PETA-ISC
The European chemical testing programme REACH is the largest animal testing programme in the world, and PETA, the PETA International Science Consortium Ltd. (PETA-ISC), and PETA’s international affiliates have been working hard to ensure that the number of animals used is minimised. One of our major concerns is that the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) hasn’t been doing all it should to ensure that companies use non-animal methods wherever possible. And European officials agree with us on that.
ECHA was dealt another blow this week regarding its failure to ensure that companies test on animals only as a last resort. ECHA requested that CINIC Chemicals Europe, Sàrl conduct a chemicals test which would have involved force-feeding a chemical to approximately 1,300 animals during pregnancy or as newborns before being killed and dissected. Disgracefully, because of a self-imposed deadline, ECHA refused to consider new information which demonstrated that the toxic test could potentially be avoided and the lives of the animals spared. CINIC went to the ECHA Board of Appeal to have the request reversed.
PETA-ISC proved instrumental in supporting CINIC through the appeal, and PETA’s very own head of science and the associate director of PETA-ISC, Dr Gilly Stoddart, spoke out in support of animals at the appeal hearing. We are delighted to reveal that the request for an animal test was reversed.
This is great news for these 1,300 animals, but the consequences of this decision are even further reaching: potentially tens of thousands of animals will be saved in the future because ECHA will have to change its excessively strict administrative processes to ensure that all information is assessed before tests on animals are performed. This critical change to ECHA’s restrictive administrative processes will help ensure that companies test on animals only as a last resort, as required by law.
To learn more, please visit PETA-ISC’s website, PISCltd.org.uk.