European safety rules are stalling the replacement of animal testing with alternatives and more animals are now being used in trials, the national advisory committee on animal testing policy NCad has warned.  

The committee said that a Dutch ban on using animals to test chemicals planned for next year is now in doubt because of European rules, a lack of finance to explore alternatives, the lengthy approval process for alternatives, and little urgency on the part of the cabinet.

“The worrying thing is that animal testing is continuing when there are alternatives,” committee member Wim de Leeuw told Nieuwsuur.

Some 492,380 tests on animals were carried out in 2022, of which 32.5% were for assessing safety. New chemical substances in food or household products have to be tested for safety according to the rules of the European Food Safety Authority and in some instances that requires animal testing.

Animals used in the tests include rats, mice, guinea pigs, miniature pigs, dogs and cats. “If we want to find out if a substance can cause birth defects for instance we have no alternative but to test it on animals,” Manon Beekhuijzen, a toxicologist at the Charles River laboratory told the programme.

There are alternatives but the law has not been changed because the whole system is built around animal testing, said Merel Ritskes-Hoitinga a professor of animal-free innovations.

“There are alternative methods which are better, cheaper and faster. The current system is not as effective as we think. Some 90% of the tests on animals fail because the substances have a different effect on humans,” she said.

Some of the rules also cause more animal suffering. Rats used in organ research are deprived of food the night before testing. “That is unnecessary and causes stress and that is why we don’t do it at our laboratory,” Beekhuijzen said.

Animals are given unnecessarily high doses of substances, which also results in animal suffering, the NCad found and it is calling on the government to lobby for changes to the European rules.

“Criteria for consumer product safety have become stricter over the years,” NCad director Debby Weijers said. “I think we are taking things too far in some areas. Why look at high levels of toxicity when those levels would never be used in people? Maybe it’s time to be more realistic,” she said.

The transition to animal-free testing is also held up because of the approval process can take up to 15 to 30 years, she said.