Chemicals

About the campaign: setting the scene

Chemicals are all around us, present in materials such as plastic and in everyday items from household cleaners and DIY products to furniture. Hundreds of thousands of animals worldwide are used every year to test the safety of chemicals, tests often conducted to meet the needs of regulators in different countries.

These toxicity tests traditionally involve cruel tests on animals such as guinea pigs, rats, mice and rabbits. Animals are force fed, forced to inhale or injected with chemicals to see what dose will sicken or kill them.

We already know that many regulatory tests on animals can be fully replaced with non-animal approaches which provide high-quality information about the everyday products we use, and without causing suffering. We push for faster development of new non-animal test methods and wider use and acceptance of non-animal approaches.

Around the world there are many different systems of rules to manage chemicals. In the European Union, for example, chemicals are governed by a piece of legislation called REACH (the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals). In the UK, following Brexit, the Government is developing their own system. Our experts work within all these global regimes to drive down animal testing. Raising the voice of concerned citizens, we put pressure on governments and policy makers to end the testing of chemicals on animals.

Our focus.
What we’re doing

We push for faster development of new non-animal test methods, wider use and acceptance of non-animal approaches, and the avoidance of testing on animals. We put pressure on governments and policy makers to end the tests on animals that can be stopped immediately, and to drive the phase out of all others.
We are expert stakeholders, representing animals at bodies such as the European Commission, the European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods and the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA). We drive for an evolution in testing associated with so many of the familiar items we use every day – from the testing of components used to make a fridge-freezer, to the fuel we put in our cars, or the products we use to clean our houses.

Working to drive animal testing out of chemicals safety worldwide we:

Challenge governments, policy makers, regulatory authorities and companies to phase-out the testing of chemicals on animals. We push for accelerated development of new non-animal approaches for the testing of chemical substances and promote the widest possible use of non-animal methods for generating high-quality safety information ensuring outdated animal tests are eliminated everywhere.
Promote the acceptance of non-animal approaches for testing chemicals by regulatory authorities, including through our work as part of ICAPO (the International Council of Animal Protection for the OECD) where we contribute to the preparation of internationally agreed guidelines for testing.
Mobilise compassionate citizens through high-profile campaigns.
Encourage brands manufacturing household products to go cruelty-free, working in partnership to enable them to become approved by Cruelty Free International, driving animal testing out of industry and the everyday products we use.

Our achievements

Leading efforts by European animal protection organisations, Cruelty Free International has been involved in the development of European chemicals legislation, REACH, since the early 2000s. We made sure that the regulation required companies to share their testing data avoiding duplication of animal tests, that animal testing should only ever be a ‘last resort’, and that non-animal methods should be promoted.

The European Citizens Initiative, which was also supported by global beauty and personal care companies The Body Shop and Dove, became only the seventh to have successfully passed the threshold of one million verified signatures when it was confirmed that 1,217,916 people had demanded an end to the outdated and unreliable use of animals in cosmetics and chemicals tests.

We encouraged ECHA to promote non animal methods, resulting in the production of guidance for industry and monitoring of the uptake of non-animal methods.

We pushed the European Commission to update REACH to delete the rabbit skin and eye irritation (Draize) tests (saving 18,000 rabbits), to encourage the avoidance of the cruel dermal acute toxicity test (saving 66,000 rats) and the use of non-animal methods for skin allergy testing (potentially saving 200,000 mice).

Our work commenting on proposals to test chemicals on animals has, to date, helped to save over 80,000 animals. Our experts continue to provide scientific arguments to encourage both ECHA and companies to halt plans to conduct animal tests.

Our investigation with SOKO Tierschutz at the Laboratory of Pharmacology and Toxicology (LPT) in Germany and our expose of the Vivotecnia laboratory in Spain have lifted the lid of secrecy and revealed the shocking levels of animal suffering caused by toxicity testing.

We contributed to successful efforts to get the OECD to adopt a new groundbreaking guideline on Defined Approaches for Skin Sensitisation, employing a selection of non-animal methods that replace cruel tests on mice and guinea pigs to predict whether chemical substances that could cause human skin allergies.

We have supported companies appealing decisions to test on animals by the European Chemicals Agency, involved in several successful cases that have prevented the deaths of thousands of animals, as well as helping to improve the decision-making of the Agency.

What’s next

Chemicals laws continue to develop around the world. In Europe, following our successful European Citizens Initiative, the European Commission has promised to start planning the phase out of animal testing for chemicals. We await the planned roadmap and stand ready to ensure that real change happens. In the UK we are pushing the government to ensure a modern cruelty-free chemicals testing regime and in the US we work to ensure that non-animal methods are prioritised and used. Challenging governments, authorities and companies we are driving real change and bringing forward the day when outdated animal tests are eliminated everywhere.

Get involved

We have made progress together but there is more to do to finally end the cruelty of testing chemicals on animals everywhere and forever. When you raise your voice governments listen. When you reward progressive brands more go cruelty-free. When you support us our experts can make sure that animal tests are driven out of chemicals regimes. Please help us consign animal testing to the history books.

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