§ Bob SpinkTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how many animals will be tested as a result of the proposed EU REACH legislation on chemicals; and if she will set out the basis for her estimate. [155857]
§ 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 front 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. 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.
the Commission proposal would require further data as tonnage increases to reflect the greater potential human and environmental exposure. Under a worst case scenario over 1,500 animals may be needed per chemical for those produced at over 1,000 tonnes (estimated from the testing requirements of the Regulation and OECD guidelines). 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 number given above.
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.