§ Mr. HancockTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what assessments she has made of the effect on the number of experiments on animals of the new REACH regulations; and if she will make a statement. [187479]
§ Alun MichaelThe EU proposal on REACH requires information to be gathered on chemicals in order to provide the basis for protecting human health and the environment. This information may come from a number of sources, one of which is animal testing. The Commission has estimated that this draft Regulation will require data to be gathered on approximately 30,000 chemicals. Of these, 20,000 are thought to be produced or imported in quantities of less than 10 tonnes. At this tonnage the current Commission proposal requires 25 animals per chemical, although it should be remembered that in most cases the tests are expected to demonstrate that the chemical concerned is safe and therefore involves no threat to humans or animals. It is a key objective of the UK Government's work on REACH to keep animal testing to a minimum. Discussions are continuing on that basis.
The Commission proposal would require further data as tonnage increases to reflect the greater potential human and environmental exposure. The tests performed need to comply with the relevant requirements for the protection of laboratory animals set out in Directive 86/609/EEC where, among other things, methods used must be refined in such a way as to minimise the amount of suffering caused to the animals concerned. Further, the chemical industry already has some of this data and there are other sources of information such as modelling of data and grouping of chemicals to read-across data from one chemical to another, all of which will reduce the amount of new testing that will be required. If recent experience from a major testing programme in the USA were to be duplicated in Europe, the number of new animal tests that will need to be undertaken will be significantly lower than the estimates talked about to date.
It is an overall objective, for the UK Government, in negotiating this Regulation, to ensure that animal testing is kept to the minimum necessary to protect human health and the environment. One of the ways we aim to do this is by applying an intelligent approach to testing.
1662WSThe Government welcomes the Commission's efforts to minimise animal testing and recognises that several provisos have been included in the legislative proposal to encourage maximum use of existing data, avoid duplication of testing and use alternative methods wherever appropriate.