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| STATEMENT OF THE ecopa - WORKING GROUP IN REGARD TO SCALE ON BEHALF OF THE ecopa ANNUAL ASSEMBLY |
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ecopa, the quadripartite umbrella organisation of National Consensus Platforms for Alternatives to Animal Experiments, has voiced , in the past, concern over the potentially extensive use of laboratory animals due to the new EU Chemicals Policy regulations based on the resp. White Paper and REACH-programme. Due to the intervention of ecopa and other organisations, there has been an appropriate adaptation of the request for testing and funding of the EU for alternative method development in that context.
With the EU environmental initiatives such as SCALE expanding the testing for and evaluation of safety resp. hazard and risk assessment, it is to be expected that once more lab animal testing will increase due to lack of existing adequate alternative methods within the foreseen time frame.
In fact, the current documents of the EU Commission and Technical Working Groups already indicate that exactly that is going to happen : they require the development of further animal models , instead of the respective alternatives.
ecopa demands that for the SCALE programmes, different fromt the REACH case, alternative method development is requested and funded from the very beginning, and is taken up as a guiding principle in the future regulations.
ecopa requests that for the estimate of lab animal testing required due to the future regulations, unbiased analysis is performed and reports are supplied to the European citizens and the Parliament.
This should be supervised and ensured by an independant organisation such as ecopa.
Also, ecopa asks the Commission, the Member States and the Members of the European Parliament to carefully balance the justified concerns for human health and the environment with the ethical concerns over additionally required testing, and lacking alternative methods for it.
The SCALE programme should be diligently screened for unnecessary testing activities that do not offer additional safety for human health nor environmental protection. |
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