The use of non-animal methods for the safety testing of chemicals could increase after a revised version of Europe’s Classification, Labelling and Packaging (CLP) regulation came into force on Tuesday 10 December. 

The changes commit the European Commission to “promote, monitor and regularly evaluate” innovation in the field of non-animal testing and to keep the regulation itself up-to-date. The revision also adds an 18-month timeframe for aligning the CLP regulation with approaches already agreed internationally on the use of non-animal test data.  

The CLP regulation, first introduced by the EU in 2008, sets out how to describe hazardous properties of chemical substances, and how this information is to be translated into the warnings found on product labels. Currently, the regulation lacks details on how information from non-animal test methods can be used to make hazard classifications.  

There are many non-animal test methods which government authorities accept for the testing of chemicals, especially in testing for skin irritation and corrosion, eye irritation and corrosion, and skin sensitisation – these are three of our 10 RAT (Replace Animal Tests) list tests. Even when a non-animal test method is well-established, its use can be held back by a lack of clarity on how the information it generates can be used to describe the hazards of a chemical. This uncertainty can result in tests on animals being continued despite valid non-animal tests being available. 

The CLP regulation has fallen behind the current state-of-the-art of non-animal science. This is despite the European Union having contributed to international efforts to agree on how to describe chemical hazards in work under the United Nations Globally Harmonised System (UN GHS) for classifying chemicals. Here, consensus was reached on some uses of non-animal data as far back as 2019 but this has yet to be reflected in the European Union’s own laws. In addition to ensuring that progress already made is incorporated, the revision of the CLP regulation will also help to future-proof it so it stays in line developments in the use of non-animal approaches. 

Our Director of Science and Regulatory Affairs, Dr Emma Grange, said: “Vital updates to this key chemical law on the use of non-animal data are long overdue. We are delighted that the revised CLP regulation now clearly sets a commitment to keeping the law itself up to date and in a timely manner. We played a key role, in collaboration with other animal protection NGOs, in pushing for these fundamental changes to the CLP regulation – this is the evolution of laws which are needed for progress in the transition away from testing on animals.”