The European Commission is to continue collaborating with 35 nationally recognised companies from seven industry sectors for another 5-year term, in a partnership that aims to promote alternative approaches to animal testing. The next term of the EPAA partnership (The European Partnership for Alternative Approaches to Animal Testing), will stretch from 2016-2020.
The partners include five Directorates-General of the European Commission and 35 companies from the chemical, pharmaceutical, cosmetics, soaps and detergents, crop protection, animal health and fragrances sectors, including their European trade federations.
EPAA’s mission is the ‘replacement, reduction and refinement of animal use for meeting regulatory requirements through better and more predictive science’. The partnership has already successfully completed its second five-year term, with the partners now seeking to build on the experience acquired over the last decade and on the achievements to date. These include the development of a wide range of actions in the areas of data sharing, toxicology testing without animals, streamlining procedures allowing alternative approaches to be used, and challenging established methods.
The EPAA has committed to a future emphasis on closer co-operation with regulatory agencies and national regulators and the promotion of international harmonisation of regulatory safety testing requirements, whenever suitable and possible.
Plans to continue the partnership came around the same time as four of the world’s largest animal welfare organisations came together this week to urge New Zealand’s Minister for Primary Industries to support a ban on cosmetics animal testing in the country in the amended Animal Welfare Act, currently under review.
Humane Society International, World Animal Protection, the International Fund for Animal Welfare and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals are calling for New Zealand to follow the lead of the EU, Norway, Israel and India and become the first country in Australasia to outlaw testing cosmetics on live animals.
