REACHing Beyond Animal Testing

Our global #BeCrueltyFree campaign to end animal testing for cosmetics grows each day. Last month we celebrated a landmark move by India to close its borders to newly animal-tested cosmetics, becoming the first cruelty-free cosmetics market in South Asia. And our #BeCrueltyFree teams are on the ground in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States, working with lawmakers, regulators, and companies to make similar progress toward an end to cosmetics animal testing worldwide.

But we’re not stopping there. HSI and HSUS scientists and policy experts are also working behind-the-scenes with stakeholders in other product sectors — chemicals, pesticides, and pharmaceuticals — changing laws and regulations across the globe to replace decades-old animal tests with modern alternatives.

One of HSI’s top areas of focus has been on reforming Europe’s chemicals law, known as REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals). REACH requires a variety of animal test data for upwards of 30,000 substances, which means horrific suffering from chemical poisoning and death for potentially millions of rats, mice, rabbits, and other creatures. But REACH also requires the use of animal testing alternatives where available, including measures to revise the law itself to reflect scientific progress on alternatives.

Back in 2012, HSI proposed substantial changes to REACH testing requirements to spare millions of animals while providing the same level of regulatory scrutiny of chemicals. Last week we celebrated a long overdue victory as the EU took steps to adopt several of HSI’s life-saving proposals into law. These include:

• Allowing exemptions for skin lethal dose tests, potentially sparing 15,000 or more rabbits or rats.
• Replacing a wasteful animal test for reproductive toxicity, sparing up to 2.4 million rats.
• Virtually eliminating rabbit eye and skin irritation testing through recognition of available alternatives, sparing approximately 21,000 rabbits.
• Paving the way for full replacement of mouse and guinea pig tests for skin allergy, potentially sparing as many as 218,000 animals.

But our work on REACH isn’t done yet — not until the EU adopts all available animal testing alternatives identified by HSI. You can help by taking action here.

Between 2010-12, we worked with European institutions and companies to revise testing requirements for pesticides, prior to which many redundant animal poisoning tests were required by law, subjecting 10,000 or more rodents, rabbits, dogs, and other animals to suffering and death for every new pesticide chemical registered for sale. Imagine row upon row of dogs in cages, forced to consume toxin-laced food every day for a year, growing sicker over time, until they are killed for dissection, or rabbits locked in neck restraints while a pesticide chemical is dripped into their eyes or on to the shaved skin on their backs. So archaic, so horrifying.

But our scientists successfully argued for deletion of the one-year dog test, for adoption of reconstructed human skin and other validated alternative methods in place of obsolete rabbit tests, and for nearly 100 other life-saving changes, which together have the potential to reduce pesticide animal testing by as much as half in Europe.

We have already had some success with Canadian and U.S. pesticide authorities, and our teams on the ground are actively engaged with regulators in Australia, Brazil, and India, and through international regulatory cooperation agreements, to update testing requirements to incorporate the most modern and humane testing tools.

In the near-term, these regulatory changes will save millions of gentle creatures from ever becoming “laboratory animals.” And as the toolbox of animal-free test methods continues to grow, the foundations we lay today will pave the way for closing the sad era of animal testing for cosmetics, pesticides, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals.