ANIMAL PEOPLE arranges rare show-and-tell–Procter & Gamble meets Best Friends

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

CINCINNATI–Fifteen founders and senior
staff of the Best Friends Animal Society on
October 22 talked shop with three Procter &
Gamble senior scientists and two senior
representatives of pet food maker Iams Inc., a
P&G subsidiary.
Convened by ANIMAL PEOPLE, preceding the
October 22-24 “No More Homeless Pets” conference
in Cincinnati, the meeting introduced key
personnel from one of the fastest-growing and
most increasingly influential animal charities in
the world to counterparts at one of the most
controversial companies engaged in animal
research.
Procter & Gamble since 1984 has invested
more than $190 million in developing alternatives
to animal testing, including $152 million since
1994. Yet P&G has also been continuously under
boycott by PETA and allied animal rights groups.

Procter & Gamble and Iams got the
opportunity to present a rare technical
show-and-tell for animal advocates.
Best Friends got the chance to ask hard
questions, from a variety of informed
perspectives:
* President Michael Mountain
co-authored a book attacking vivisection in the
early days of the society.
* Director of animal care Faith Maloney
brought to the table extensive experience at
supervising shelter medicine and housing, as did
communications director Bonney Brown, who is
also a former shelter director.
* Dog training and care consultant
Sherry Woodard specializes in maintaining the
psychological health of dogs in confinement.
* Northeast community programs manager
Beth Mersten formerly worked in a New Jersey
animal research lab. Mersten changed jobs
because she preferred rescuing animals, but her
knowledge of the often-at-odds cultures of both
laboratories and humane work, and her ability to
talk science with the scientists, helped to
further the discussion.
Language was an immediate problem. Twice
ANIMAL PEOPLE interrupted the proceedings to
clarify scientific jargon that confused the
animal advocates.
Notably, in discussing the species used
in testing, P&G director of product safety and
regulatory affairs Barb Slatt mentioned “animals”
as one category from whom data are collected,
and “rats and mice” as another.
Slatt referred to the status of the
species under the U.S. Animal Welfare Act. She
was not denying the capacity of rats and mice to
suffer, or their need for care, and indeed was
acknowledging and addressing it, but the context
might not have been evident to anyone unfamiliar
with the Animal Welfare Act. The AWA requires
individual tallies of the use of dogs, cats,
nonhuman primates, rabbits, hamsters, guinea
pigs, wildlife, and farm animals, but exempts
record keeping pertaining to rats, mice, and
birds.
The scientists in turn were confused by
some terms used by animal advocates, especially
“vivisection” and “pound seizure.”
To scientists, “vivisection” is invasive surgery
done to display a bodily function as part of a
teaching or research procedure, once a routine
part of medical or veterinary education but now
rarely practiced. To animal advocates,
“vivisection” means any invasive procedure done
to an animal.
“Pound seizure” was mistaken by one
scientist for a colloquial description of the
trembling of a terrified impounded dog. Among
animal advocates it originally referred to laws
passed in 14 states after World War II that
forced or encouraged animal control agencies to
provide impounded animals to laboratories. Three
states that had such laws eventually repealed
them, and joined 11 other states in prohibiting
the sale or donation of shelter animals to labs.
Since 1966 the federal Animal Welfare Act
has required any shelter that sells impounded
animals to labs to hold the animals for five days
first, for possible reclaim by people who may
have lost them. The term “pound seizure”
persists to describe any sale of impounded
animals to labs.

Taking testing in-house

The P&G/Iams meeting with Best Friends
was not called specifically to discuss recent
allegations by PETA and the British group Uncaged
Campaigns, but the allegations became a focal
topic when new charges were issued while the
meeting was in planning.
The triggering event was Iams’ October 7
announcement that it would no longer contract out
any animal testing, consistent with the Procter
& Gamble policy of bringing all animal research
in house.
P&G adopted the in-house-only policy
after PETA in July 1997 disclosed allegedly
abusive monkey care at the Huntingdon Life
Sciences laboratory in New Jersey. P&G was not
involved in the monkey work, but had hired the
same lab to do two dog studies. P&G ceased all
dealings with Huntingdon in August 1997, when
the dog studies concluded.
Iams, when acquired by P&G, did not yet
have the capacity to do all animal testing in
house. The need to develop the capacity was
emphasized when three times in three years a lab
that Iams had hired ran into trouble.
Iams was no longer using the first lab
when the problems emerged, in 2002. Iams fired
the second lab in March 2003, after PETA videos
revealed that the lab was not fulfilling the
animal care requirements spelled out in the
testing contract.
PETA disclosed trouble at the third lab in mid-2004.
“During an undercover investigation into
an Iams contract laboratory,” the PETA web site
claims, “PETA discovered that Iams kept cats and
dogs in tiny stainless steel cages and barren
cement kennels inside windowless buildings where
temperatures reached dangerous extremes.”
Images taken from videos show conditions
similar to those of typical animal control
shelters.
A dog named Christmas is said to have
“developed a serious ear infection and sores on
his feet from living on concrete and slatted
metal for six long years. Another dog,” says
PETA, “had no resting board and was not removed
from her cage during cleaning time, so she often
had to sit or lie on wet concrete. Like so many
other animals,” PETA continues, she “was given
no exercise, socialization, or psychological
enrichment. Many Iams dogs suffered cruel and
painful muscle biopsies, and Iams even allowed
its dogs to be surgically debarked to silence
their tormented cries.”
Countered Iams spokesperson Kelly
Vanasse, in a statement later posted at
<www.iamstruth.com>, “Posing as an animal lover,
the activist ‘undercover investigator’ was hired
for an Iams-funded role in the contract facility.
She had responsibility for the socialization and
enrichment of the dogs participating in Iams’
feeding studies, and was paid to develop and
implement a program to ensure that these dogs
were well cared for. At the same time, she
captured sensational video that didn’t include
any scenes of the socialization and enrichment
activities she was paid to develop and deliver.
Her video also falsely attributed footage and
stories of dogs and cats that were not a part of
Iams’ studies.
“Iams did not authorize debarking any
dogs,” Vanasse emphasized. “The ‘undercover
investigator’ authorized it without Iams’
consent.”
Vanasse provided further detail at the meeting with Best Friends.
Most important: Iams has had a policy against
debarking since the 1960s. Now enforced for
humane reasons, the policy may have been adopted
because debarking can depress dogs’ appetites,
while increasing the risk of infections that
could compromise the results of feeding studies.
No one really knows, because the policy existed
long before anyone currently in the Iams research
department worked there.
From now on, Iams declared on October 7,
Iams will do animal research at only three
locations: “Pet owners’ homes, the Iams Pet
Health and Nutrition Center, and organizations
where dogs and cats already live, such as animal
shelters and groups that train and provide dogs
to people in need. The transition will be
complete by October 2006.”
Iams announced at the same time that
Procter & Gamble investigator of alternatives to
animal research Len Sauers will transfer to Iams
to “lead the development of alternatives to dog
and cat feeding studiesŠto support the ultimate
elimination of dog and cat feeding studies in a
controlled setting as scientifically valid
alternatives become available.
“Iams already uses 17 alternative
methods,” the announcement concluded,
“including a non-animal option for
gastrointestinal studies and a non-animal method
for measuring tartar build-up–a test P&G
originally created for its oral care products,
such as Crest.”
New PETA allegations
PETA director of investigations Mary Beth
Sweetland responded to the Iams announcement with
new allegations against Iams before October 7 was
over.
“As early as 1999,” Sweetland wrote,
“Iams announced that it would no longer kill
animals at the end of studies, and yet it is
believed that a current Iams study protocol at
Auburn University calls for 80 to 120 geriatric
beagles to be impregnated and then killed after
their puppies are weaned. Many of the litters
have already been born and some are even past the
point of weaning, so it is quite possible that
these beagles are already dead.”
“The Auburn University study is
completely fabricated,” Vanasse countered.
“Iams is doing a feeding study at Auburn with
dogs volunteered by their owners. Once the study
is over, the dogs and their puppies will return
home.”
“The allegations are false,” affirmed
Auburn University College of Veterinary Medicine
division of laboratory health Michael Hart, DVM,
in an e-mail to ANIMAL PEOPLE. “Iams has not
conducted any such study with Auburn University
in the past, is not conducting one with us now,
and is not planning to conduct such a study with
us in the future. In fact, Iams is pioneering a
way for dog owners to loan their dogs to us for
feeding studies and have them returned home after
the studies are completed.”
Sweetland further charged that “Purdue
University is currently conducting kidney-failure
experiments on dogs for Iams that will continue
until July 2005,” and that Iams “has just given
Purdue $195,140 to study muscle atrophy in mice
until June 2006. Muscle atrophy in rodents,”
Sweetland said, “is created by suspending the
animals by their tails for weeks or months at a
time.”
Responded Vanasse, “The study at Purdue
researching kidney failure in dogs is an in-home
clinical trial with dogs who already have the
disease. This is exactly the type of study that
PETA has been advocating,” instead of studies
that induce disease in healthy animals.
“There is a mouse study being conducted
to look at how nutrition affects muscle atrophy,”
Vanasse acknowledged. “The back legs are
slightly elevated for seven days, not the weeks
or months suggested by PETA. The mice have full
range of motion, access to food, bedding, etc.”
Vanasse displayed slides of that
experiment to the Best Friends representatives.
The purpose of it is to replicate the effects
that develop in dogs with hip displasia, who are
kept mobile by supporting their hindquarters with
prosthetic wheels. Mice are used to discover
“markers” for the development of the muscle
atrophy that may result, because mice age much
more rapidly, and this in turn magnifies effects
that may be hard to see in longer-lived animals.
None of the Best Friends representatives
liked that experiment, but as Faith Maloney put
it, “If that’s the worst thing Iams is doing,
let’s move on to another company, because we
know there are many worse things being done by
people who don’t come to meetings and show us
pictures.”
Sweetland’s bottom line was objecting
that Iams is “expanding its own Dayton facility,
meaning that it has no intention of giving up all
experiments on dogs and cats. It should stop
building,” she asserted, ” and instead devote
those resources to figuring out how to eliminate
all pet food tests.”
Countered Vanasse, “If we’re bringing
everything in-house in 24 months, of course
we’ll be doing more nutritional feeding studies
in-house, since it is not technically feasible
to completely move away from controlled studies”
and still meet consumer expectations plus
regulatory requirements.
“At the same time,” Vanasse reiterated,
“we’ll continue developing alternative test
methods.”

Boycott history

The PETA boycott began soon after P&G in
March 1984 reached an agreement with Animal
Rights International founder Henry Spira to phase
out animal testing, as rapidly as alternatives
could be developed and validated to the
satisfaction of regulators. P&G–as detailed by
Animal Liberation author Peter Singer in his 1997
biography of Spira, Ethics Into Action–refused
to include PETA and the Humane Society of the
U.S. as last minute would-be partners in the
deal, which neither organization had any role in
negotiating.
HSUS endorsed the boycott until 1999,
when it not only withdrew but made P&G senior
scientist Kay Stitzel the first industry
recipient of the Russell & Burch Award it
presents for advancement of alternatives to
animal research.
Founded in 1983, In Defense of Animals
began active support of the boycott in 1986, and
Uncaged Campaigns has supported the boycott since
it was founded in 1994.
Iams became a boycott target after P&G
bought the pet food maker in September 1999–but
the boycott has been waged chiefly with
information about invasive and terminal research
done while Iams was owned by Clay Mathile, who
in 1982 bought Iams from Paul Iams, the former
P&G employee who founded Iams in 1946. (See Paul
Iams obituary, page 22.)
Several of the most controversial studies
were done by Iams researcher Dan Carey, DVM,
between 1987 and 1995, but were not described in
veterinary journals until after P&G acquired Iams
and encouraged the company scientists to publish
their work so that other companies would not feel
that they had to do similar studies.
Carey introduced himself to the Best
Friends meeting by displaying a slide of an
article describing one of the most notorious of
his studies. He testified about his relief that
he would never again have to do such a study.
He explained that P&G has now developed a
noninvasive, nonlethal alternative to get the
information he was seeking.
Then Carey talked about his current work,
with visibly more enthusiasm.

Consulting animal advocates

Iams spokesperson Kelly Vanasse and an
Iams behaviorist gave an extensive slide show
about the current Iams testing program and newly
renovated and expanded facilities at a plenary
session of the Conference on Homeless Animal
Management & Policy in Orlando in August 2004.
That was the first attempt of either Iams or P&G
to open discussion about animal testing with the
humane community as a whole.
The Cincinnati meeting with Best Friends
was the first time either Iams or P&G discussed
animal testing with representatives of a humane
organization which had no direct involvement in
either supervising the deal with Animal Rights
International or orchestrating the boycott.
P&G often conferred with Henry Spira,
who died in 1998, and continues to confer
regularly with Animal Rights International board
member Andrew Rowan.
Rowan, perhaps best known for his 1984
book Of Mice, Models, & Men, is now chief of
staff at HSUS, and also directs an HSUS program
aimed at ending studies involving pain and
distress to animals by 2020.
Rowan is a member of the P&G/Iams Animal
Care Advisory Board, appointed in 2003.
Other Animal Care Advisory Board members
include Mike Arms, executive director of the
Helen V. Woodward Animal Center in Rancho Santa
Fe, California; Kathryn Bayne, associate
director of the Association for Assessment and
Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care; the
Reverend Kenneth Boyd, professor of medical
ethics at the Edinburgh University Medical
School; Kelley Donham, associate head for
agricultural medicine at the University of Iowa;
American SPCA Poison Control Center chief Stephen
Hansen, DVM; Universities Federation for Animal
Welfare ethologist Robert Hubrecht; cat welfare
expert Irene Rochlitz, DVM; and University of
Pennsylvania ethologist James Serpell.
In addition to conferring regularly with
the Animal Care Advisory Board, P&G
representatives have met several times with PETA
director of investigations Mary Beth Sweetland
and other PETA staff members.

Three-R program

Procter & Gamble director of product
safety and regulatory affairs Barb Slatt offered
Best Friends a brief history of the P&G
alternatives program.
In 1959, Slatt recounted, British authors
William Russell and Rex Burch proposed that just
as the basics of education are the “three Rs” of
reading, writing, and arithmetic, the “three
Rs” of animal testing should become “Refine,
Reduce, Replace.”
“Refinement” referred to “all changes in
protocols that reduce the incidence or severity
of distress experienced by laboratory animals”;
“reduction” to using fewer animals; and
“replacement” to avoiding using any live animals
at all.
Procter & Gamble formally adopted the
Russell and Burch principles as part of the 1984
agreement with Henry Spira, but had already
informally been following them, Slatt said. As
Peter Singer explained in Ethics Into Action,
this is part of why Spira chose to seek a deal to
phase out animal testing with P&G instead of a
corporate rival. Spira wanted to find a company
that would convincingly demonstrate the
possibility of eliminating animal testing to
other major consumer product manufacturers, and
after researching corporate animal use, believed
P&G showed the most likelihood of committing to
the necessary development program and then
sticking with it.
Refinement of animal testing, Barb Slatt
explained, is an ongoing Procter & Gamble
concern, and always has been, in order to
maximize the amount of quality data collected
relative to the amount of money spent to do
animal testing.
“We don’t like to do animal testing,”
Slatt said. “Scientists don’t like to do animal
testing, at least in the corporate world,
because it tends to be slow, unpleasant, and is
undertaken with no guarantee of an eventual
payoff for the investors. In the academic world,
this may be different. Academic scientists do
more basic research and more abstract
investigation of procedures and processes with no
specific anticipation of bringing an application
to market. Academic research is at least partly
supported by government grants and nonprofit
foundations. In the for-profit world, we answer
to investors. Investors expect us to make money.”
Because refinement has always been part
of the Procter & Gamble product safety testing
agenda, Slatt said, it is not counted as part
of the P&G alternatives program.
Likewise, Slatt explained, P&G efforts
to improve laboratory animal welfare are not part
of the P&G alternatives program. “Welfare is a
separate endpoint with major potential for
innovations,” Slatt said.
The expense of rebuilding the Iams animal
research facilities will not be counted as part
of the P&G investment in alternatives, because
even though the improvements will help to
facilitate less use of animals, it is work that
P&G and Iams would be doing anyway, independent
of the 1984 agreement.
The alternatives program seeks
replacement of animal testing as the ultimate
goal, Slatt said, and pursues reduction as
something that sometimes can be done in the
interim, while alternatives are being developed.

Frustration

Procter & Gamble senior scientist Frank
Gerberick showed ANIMAL PEOPLE and
representatives of the Best Friends Animal
Society the P&G alternatives research and
development timeline.
The first step was reviewing the various
tests that P&G used and the regulatory standards
that P&G had to meet, trying to think of ways to
get the same information without using living
animals. The review took about five years, and
often seemed endless, Gerberick said, because
P&G had entered a rapid growth phase, frequently
acquiring other companies and whole new product
lines that had to be evaluated.
In fact, P&G tripled in size during the
first 10 years of the alternatives program, and
also tripled retail sales despite the PETA
boycott.
During the first step, Gerberick and
Slatt acknowledged, progress toward developing
alternatives seemed slow, and this may have
caused activists who expected quick results to
lose confidence in the sincerity of the P&G
effort.
Except for the P&G role in forming and funding
the Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to
Animal Testing, little progress was evident.
Gerberick and Slatt avered that within
P&G the lack of clear progress was just as
frustrating. Many false leads were pursued
before the scientists found approaches that
worked.
Once possible alternative testing methods
were identified in each area, research and
development started. At this point, circa
1989-1990 for most P&G product lines, the
investment required of the P&G shareholders
rapidly escalated–and had to be made just as
PETA et al stepped up boycott pressure.
By mid-1989, the boycotts irritated
then-P&G chairman John Smale so much that he
dashed off a three-page memo proposing a $17
million campaign to discredit the animal rights
movement. Someone leaked it almost immediately
to Spira, Spira leaked it to news media, the
scheme went no farther, and Smale soon
thereafter left P&G.

Breakthroughs

The hostile response from PETA, IDA,
and HSUS to the P&G financial commitment had the
effect of scaring several major P&G corporate
rivals away from doing anything whatever that
might draw attention to their use of animals.
But Procter & Gamble vice president for
corporate communications Linda Ulrey told ANIMAL
PEOPLE both at the time and later that despite
some internal dissonance, there was never any
doubt among most of the top-ranking P&G people
that the alternatives program was the right way
to go. By the early 1990s, Ulrey said, some
alternative testing methods were in use, and the
P&G planners could see others coming.
Slatt pointed out in the meeting with
Best Friends that P&G executives are used to long
product development cycles. Sometimes a simple
consumer product can be invented, perfected,
and marketed within a year, but the cycle for
developing, testing, and marketing
pharmaceuticals can be decades.
By 1994, P&G use of animal species
tracked under the U.S. Animal Welfare Act fell
from 13,401 to 4,582, and total animal use
dropped from circa 75,000 to about 35,000. By
1994 P&G had already almost eliminated animal
testing of non-pharmaceutical products except as
part of validation studies to confirm the
efficacy of non-animal testing methods to the
satisfaction of regulators.
On June 30, 1999, Procter & Gamble
officially ended the use of animal tests for
beauty, fabric, home care, and paper products,
except where required by law. This applied to
about 80% of the total P&G product portfolio.
New products are still tested to whatever
extent regulatory agencies and product safety
considerations demand, but Slatt explained that
P&G goes through a negotiated protocol with
regulators before undertaking any test. First
P&G searches scientific literature to find out if
similar tests have been done that might supply
the required information. If not, P&G tries to
find a non-animal test that will satisfy the
requirements. If no non-animal test is
acceptable, P&G uses the testing method that
involves the fewest animals for the shortest time.

The test without the mouse

Slatt rebutted a series of common
activist misunderstandings about animal testing.
First was the belief that alternatives
“are already available, but companies won’t use
them because they cost more. This is false,”
Slatt said. “Data from alternative tests are
often better, meaning that the findings are more
objective and less variable, cheaper, and/or
faster. But not all alternatives are
sufficiently robust to use.
“In other words,” Slatt continued, “we
cannot use them to find out everything that we
have to find out. Some endpoints are more
complex, and are not readily modeled, for
example trying to find out the effects of
respiratory allergy, in comparison to assessing
skin irritation,” which is easier.
Second, Slatt mentioned the view that
animals “are so different from humans that animal
data are not predictive. This is false,” she
said. “Though animals are different from humans
and can respond differently to toxins, we
understand the uncertainties and account for them
in our risk assessments.”
The advent of advanced biotechnology has
enabled scientists to genetically modify mice and
rats so as to better mimic human response. Slatt
noted that while investigating the elements of
mouse genetics that have to be modified to make a
particular experiment work, scientists often
find a way to do the experiment without the
mouse. Sometimes just a cell culture is
sufficient.
Third, Slatt addressed the belief that,
“Other companies can eliminate animal use, so
everyone can. Many other companies do not
innovate,” Slatt explained, “but use
traditional ingredients which have already been
tested using animals. Others allow suppliers to
do ingredient testing for them. Others do their
product safety testing via their pharmaceutical
units,” even when the product is not a
pharmaceutical.
Fourth, Slatt mentioned the oft-repeated
PETA claim that “Animal testing is not required
by any government. This is false,” she said.
“Some regulations require very specific
animal tests. Even when animal testing is not
explicitly required” Slatt stated, “governments
require proof of safety and efficacy for which
they expect to see animal test results. Most
governments are reluctant to accept alternatives.”
U.S. product safety law sets up a
framework for regulation which allows the
regulatory agencies to spell out for each product
what test results they want to see, based on
perception of possible risk. Memorandums of
understanding written to companies applying to
market new products often require animal testing,
in various forms, and have the force of law.
That there are no non-tested consumer
chemical products may be verified through the
EPA/NIOSH Registry of Toxic Effects of Chemical
Substances, accessible at university libraries.
The registry lists each chemical product and
ingredient by common name, brand name, and
molecular formula, along with the dates and
types of animal testing done to place the product
on the market.

“Cruelty-free” labeling

Procter & Gamble has for more than 15
years refused to use labeling indicating that
products have not been animal-tested, even
though some P&G products meet the criteria used
by major “cruelty-free” manufacturers, because
it believes such labeling is unfair and
misleading.
This caused activist consternation after
P&G bought the Aussie hair product line. Soon
thereafter P&G removed text from the Aussie
labeling that suggested the products were not
animal-tested.
“P&G has consistently refrained from
making claims related to animal research on our
products and packaging, and in keeping with this
policy, we are phasing out that language from
Aussie packaging,” company spokespersons
advised. “This does not represent a change in
Aussie’s research and manufacturing process, but
is simply a matter of making Aussie’s labels
consistent with P&G policy.”
Fifth and last, Slatt attacked the
assertion that companies only do animal testing
to protect themselves from litigation. “In
product liability litigation,” Slatt explained,
“the expectation is that ‘best practices’ are
used to evaluate safety. If an alternative has
been validated and is considered robust, it
becomes the best practice and can be used in
defense.”

Alternatives in use

Procter & Gamble product safety and
regulatory affairs human safety section head
Daniel S. Marsman, DVM, shared with ANIMAL
PEOPLE a list of alternatives to animal testing
that P&G laboratories either now use, “or have
investigated previously for robustness/validity,”
Marsman stipulated.
“Their regulatory status is mixed,”
Marsman explained. “Most are not accepted as
full replacements for animal testing,” but they
are used to reduce the numbers of animals and
tests that are needed to meet regulatory
requirements.
Marsman asterisked the tests which have won at
least partial regulatory acceptance.
The terms “ex vivo” and “in vitro” mean
the procedures are not done on a living animal.
The ex vivo and in vitro procedures often use
materials such as blood, hair, sperm, or skin
cells from dandruff. Occasionally they may use
recycled materials from animals who have been
used in the lethal or terminal experiments that
are still required by law, primarily in
connection with testing pharmaceuticals.
Sometimes they use body parts obtained from
slaughterhouses.
Barb Slatt acknowledged that most animal
advocates might find any use of animal tissues
distasteful. Slatt speculated that alternatives
to any use of animal tissues might eventually be
developed, but added that this would be a very
distant goal, since the purpose of product
safety testing is to find out the effect of
substances on various human and animal organs.
In order to do that, Slatt said, scientists
would have to create synthetic organs that
respond to a range of exposures in exactly the
same way as actual body tissues. This would be
almost the equivalent of creating advanced life
forms in a test tube.
Marsman and Slatt both noted that to
identify which specific tests Procter & Gamble is
using at any given time might indicate to
competing companies what products P&G might be
seeking regulatory approval to market.
Slatt added that rival companies tend to
be familiar with exactly what each test is used
for, since P&G policy from the beginning of the
alternatives research and development program has
been to share whatever technology it develops
with other companies, to reduce the volume of
animal testing throughout the consumer product
industry.
Marsman recently spent some time on loan
to the European Center for Validation of
Alternative Methods, helping European companies
to reduce the amount of animal testing they will
have to do to comply with new European Union
product safety requirements.
The EU Registration, Evaluation, &
Authorization of Chemicals program could
potentially require Britain alone to perform
tests on as many as 6.5 million animals, British
rural affairs minister Alun Michael told
Parliament in March 2004.
The EU program, called REACH, parallels
the High Production Volume testing program
underway in the U.S.
“We are pro-actively partnering with
others around the globe, in industry and
moderate animal welfare groups,” Marsman said,
“to convince governments to stop requiring
unnecessary animal testing, fund development of
non-animal alternative test methods specific to
their needs, and set appropriately high
standards for animal care.”