Activites

• 1995/09/25 Final act published in Official Journal
• 1995/07/14 Decision by Parliament, 1st reading/single reading
  • T4-0373/1995 summary

    Adopting the report by Mrs ROTH-BEHRENDT (PSE, D), the European Parliament deplored the fact that, two years after the adoption of the directive on cosmetic products, the Commission was unable to provide a detailed analysis of the scale and purpose of animal testing of cosmetic products in the Union. It was particularly scathing about the lack of progress in replacing animal tests, as this called the deadline of 1 January 1998 set in Directive 93/35 on cosmetic products for banning these tests into question, and reaffirmed its wish to ban these tests by that date. It called on the Commission to: - present a detailed analysis of animal experiments carried out in the Union between 1991 et 1993; - re-evaluate its interpretation of Article 4 of Directive 93/35/EEC in order to include finished products; - instigate a debate on controls of animal experiments prior to authorization (including the need for the experiment and the numbers of animals used); - take measures calling on companies conducting these experiments to take part in studies into in vitro methods and launch a debate on the acceptance of alternative methods; - implement studies allowing progress to be made in alternative methods, especially for tests on skin sensitization and acute/sub-chronic/chronic sensitization, to be financed by the Commission, the Member States and the industries concerned.�

• 1995/06/27 Committee report tabled for plenary, single reading
  • A4-0165/1995
• 1995/04/03 Committee referral announced in Parliament, 1st reading/single reading
• 1994/12/15 Non-legislative basic document published
  • COM(1994)0606 summary

    In its 1994 annual report on the development, validation and legal acceptance of alternative methods to animal experiments, the Commission reviews the main objectives and future action by the Community in this area, the aim being to replace animal experiments by alternative methods which guarantee consumers an equivalent level of protection. The report points out that a great deal of work has been done since Directive 93/35/EEC on cosmetic products was adopted by the whole industry and the Commission, mainly thanks to intense collaboration with the USA and Japan. However, the only interesting results to emerge from studies carried out in 1993 demonstrated that, although it was possible to reduce the number of animals used in experiments on the finished product, it was still not possible to replace animal tests by alternative methods of testing the ingredients. Only finished products could be tested in vitro on the basis of data on the toxicity of the ingredients. As far as the prospects are concerned, the Commission points out that there is reason to hope that alternative in vitro methods could replace animal experiments in the near future, while offering consumers the same level of protection as that achieved with animal tests in areas such as eye irritation, cutaneous absorption, mutagenicity, phototoxicity/photoirritation. Finished products could soon all be tested in vitro on the basis of prior knowledge of the toxicity of the ingredients. However, the Commission foresees a number of difficulties, the main problem being the fact that, with current levels of scientific knowledge, it is unlikely that all animal experiments will be replaced in a series of studies (acute lethal toxicity, sub-chronic and chronic toxicity, carcinogenesis, teratogenesis etc.). The Commission considers that it will be important in the future, when implementing Directive 93/35/EEC (banning the introduction of toxic substances when formulating finished cosmetic products and setting limits on the use of certain ingredients which could be hazardous to human health) to: - check if development and validation studies under way might apply to a larger number of different substances, especially the ingredients regulated by the directive, - select from cosmetic ingredients which have been safety-assessed a group of substances with in-vivo toxicity data which are relevant to correlated in vitro/in vivo tests, - optimise the use of test databases and introduce an information system by organizing a database specifically for cosmetics. The Commission also considers that research into alternative methods designed to replace animal tests will continue to progress in parallel to methods to reduce the suffering of the animal or help reduce the number of animals tested. The European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods (ECVAM), a unit of the European Research Centre, could speed up the process of legal adoption of methods validated by the OECD.�

Documents

• Non-legislative basic document published: COM(1994)0606
• Committee report tabled for plenary, single reading: A4-0165/1995
• Decision by Parliament, 1st reading/single reading: T4-0373/1995

History

(these mark the time of scraping, not the official date of the change)