Over the past few weeks our Senior Science Advisor, Kate Shipton, has attended events representing both Cruelty Free Europe and Cruelty Free International, all with the aim of keeping animal-free testing on the agendas of Europe’s decision-makers. 

At the biannual meeting of the National Contact Points (NCP) for the Directive on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes, in Brussels, we discussed the European Commission’s roadmap to phasing out animal testing in regulatory chemical testing. This roadmap is a direct result of our European Citizens’ Initiative, ‘Save Cruelty-Free Cosmetics, Commit To A Europe Without Animal Testing’, which made the demands of European citizens perfectly clear when it received over 1.2 million verified signatures. 

A National Contact Point is a group of representatives from each EU member state ensuring that a specific Directive, in this case the use of animals in scientific research, is upheld. We have often given presentations at these meetings, as NGO stakeholders. 

Next, Kate was at the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) HQ in Paris, representing ICAPO (International Council on Animal Protection in OECD Programmes). ICAPO are a group of animal protection organisations which work to ensure that non-animal testing methods are included in the OECD’s development of standardised chemical testing guidelines. Based in Paris, the OECD is a union of 38 of the world’s industrialised countries, including the United States, Japan, Australia, Canada, Chile, Mexico and much of Europe. This facilitates progress to end animal testing to be discussed at a global level. 

Non-animal testing methods must be developed and accepted to fulfil regulatory requirements for the safety testing of chemicals, under a standardised validation process. Work continues in the OECD group responsible for updating these validation guidelines, of which Kate is a member.  

Finally, back in Brussels, we attended the European Regulatory Summit conference. These events are an opportunity for us to stay up-to-date with developments in EU chemicals regulations. Alongside this, the event gave us the opportunity to discuss chemicals regulations with regulators and other stakeholders, including those working in the manufacturing of chemicals and other NGOs. 

Our Director of Science and Regulatory Affairs, Dr Emma Grange, said: "The team are routinely involved in meetings, discussions and policy forums at the highest levels around the world. It is vital that our voice is heard by regulators and politicians, to ensure that animal testing is phased-out as soon as possible and the application of non-animal testing methods is able to increase. Our work in the UK and EU is particularly important at the moment, with changes to chemicals laws expected to be made within the year.”