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EU
condemned for ‘back door testing’
The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) has
revealed how the European Union has signed an agreement with
the Israeli government that will see many EU animal experiments
conducted in laboratories in Israel.
This removes obstacles faced by EU cosmetics, food and drug
companies and allows Europe to conduct animal experiments outside
the EU. The agreement, put in place at the same time as the
EU Parliament is debating the introduction of an EU animal testing
ban for cosmetics, will see EU countries accepting test results
from animal experiments conducted by Israeli companies authorised
by the Israeli Laboratory Accreditation Authority (ILAC).
That means it will now be possible for EU companies to comply
with any future EU testing ban by having their animal testing
conducted in Israel, and then passing the product directly through
to regulatory authorities in Europe for approval for commercial
use.
BUAV Campaigns Officer, Della Green, says: “This is animal
testing by the back door, a way of shifting animal suffering
to another country whilst Europe gets a clean slate. That’s
an outrageous betrayal of EU citizens who want to see a stop
to this sort of cruelty, and a betrayal of laboratory animals.”
Chris Davies, a Liberal Democrat member of the European Parliament’s
consumer policy committee said: “This shows the hypocrisy
of EU governments in calling for a test ban only within EU borders.
What we need is a complete marketing ban on new cosmetics tested
on animals, otherwise all we’re doing is transferring the
problem of animal testing from within the EU to countries outside
the EU.”
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