The EU’s new Veterinary Medicines Regulation came into force today, bringing with it positive changes to the way new veterinary medicines are tested for safety, quality and effectiveness.  

The Regulation details the kind of tests that new medicines for animals have to undergo to ensure that they work and do not cause unacceptable side effects. Compared to the previous version of the legislation, there is the potential for fewer tests on animals and opportunities for more flexibility about the species and route of administration that can be used. 

Our Replace Animal Tests (RAT) List campaign, which identifies animal tests that are still happening despite availability of replacement non-animal methods, highlights the issue of veterinary vaccine batch tests, in which approximately 5,000 animals each year are needlessly injected with vaccines in EU laboratories in an attempt to ensure quality. We are delighted to see that the new Veterinary Medicines Regulation contains a provision to avoid this testing, and we will be monitoring closely to ensure that vaccine developers put it into practice. 

Our Director of Science, Dr Katy Taylor, said: “It’s fantastic to see progress like this being made, but we still have a long way to go. Over 440,000 animals were tested on to meet the requirements of EU veterinary medicines legislation in 2018. We hope that the new Regulation will see this number fall significantly, but we will be maintaining pressure on authorities to keep animal testing at the top of the agenda.” 

If you are an EU national, please help us end animal testing across Europe by signing and sharing our European Citizens’ Initiative to End Animal Testing.