[White Paper of the European Commission--strategy for a new chemicals policy].
The current chemicals regulation in EU member states provides sufficient data on new chemicals but almost non on the about 100.000 existing chemicals. To improve the situation the EU Commission is proposing in a recent White Paper on a strategy for a new chemicals policy to regulate new and existing chemicals in an identical manner. The Commission suggests to use in vitro methods to provide information rapidly on hazardous health and environmental properties of chemicals. The fundamental change in the testing strategy, which is relying on in vitro methods rather than testing in animals is most welcome not only from the scientific and economic point of view but also from the perspective of the protection of animals and the environment. A calculation of the costs and time for testing all existing chemicals in animal experiments shows that this task is unrealistic from a financial point of view and also when taking into account the time required for testing. Taking into account the proposals provided by several working groups of the EU validation centre ECVAM during the past year, a concept is described that will allow the testing of all existing chemicals applying only non-animal tests. Since the new testing strategy will be cheaper and faster it will be more acceptable from both the financial and the ethical point of view. Finally, establishing the proposed new in vitro tests in the safety testing strategy will require considerable funding of validation studies by the EU Commission.
Spielmann
Horst
H
Zentralstelle zur Erfassung und Bewertung von Ersatz- und Ergänzungsmethoden zum Tierversuch (ZEBET) im Bundesinstitut für gesundheitlichen Verbraucherschutz und Veterinärmedizin (BgVV), D-Berlin, Germany. spielmann.zebet@bgvv.de
D000826:Animal Testing Alternatives; D000818:Animals; D002621:Chemistry / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000592:standards*; D005062:European Union