Humane Society International’s Animal-free Safety Assessment Collaboration issues a statement that EU animal testing ban for cosmetic and cosmetic ingredients was being undermined by ECHA and its Board of Appeal.
ECHA to Carry Out Studies on Vertebrates
The ECHA’s Board of Appeal adopted two decisions concerning compliance checks of registration dossiers for
homosalate and
2-ethylhexyl salicylate on vertebrate animals. AFSA believes that this is a trend of systematically requesting unnecessary animal data despite a legal obligation to promote non-animal methods. The tests currently being ordered for just two cosmetic ingredients would subject thousands of animals and their offspring to suffering and death.
The testing is said to fulfill the requirements of REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals) Regulation to ensure occupational safety for workers in chemical manufacturing plants.
The lessons learned in animal-free safety assessment of cosmetics over many years can be readily applied to occupational safety assessment of ingredients without compromising human safety.
Cosmetics Regulation Ban on Animal Testing
AFSA Collaboration partners from the cosmetics sector join HSI in calling on EU Institutions to ensure the essence of the Cosmetics Regulation ban on animal testing remains strong, and for EU science and regulatory leaders to work with the organization to formalize a process for animal-free occupational safety assessment.
REACH and ECHA are holding back innovation and societal progress by not enabling the best available science to underpin regulatory safety decisions. It is essential that EU regulations and their application be sufficiently flexible to allow for the most up-to-date science and tools, and new types of non-animal data, to be fully utilized to protect human health and the environment.
AFSA believes that the future of chemical safety assessment is animal-free, and it is past time EU institutions embraced the transformational change required to move away from a hazard-based paradigm rooted in tick-box animal testing in favor of modern, human-relevant, non-animal scientific approaches based on risk and exposure.
Source: Animal-Free Safety Assessment (AFSA) Collaboration