Fairer animal testing law set to be approved by MEPs
Posted, March 30, 2009 @ 12:00
Parish report better protects animals without risking human health
Brussels, 31st March 2009 -- A new law on animal testing to be adopted today by a committee of MEPs will improve animal welfare without jeopardising indispensable medial experiments, according to Neil Parish, Conservative MEP and the parliament's draftsman of the proposals.
The legislation - which is due to be adopted by the parliament's agriculture committee this afternoon - aims to create a framework in which animal testing can become obsolete by encouraging the development of better and cheaper methods.
The new directive updates legislation from 1986. It promotes the '3Rs' principles of replacement, refinement and reduction. By encouraging the development of alternatives, Mr Parish believes the directive sets the framework to allow the EU to move towards the end goal of a total abolition of animal experimentation
However the report itself stops short of an outright ban on all animal experimentation for medical research, which Mr Parish says would be irresponsible and detrimental to human health at the current time.
Mr Parish, who is also President of the European Parliament's animal welfare intergroup, said:
"The law on animal testing is outdated and needs strengthening.
"The proposals put to MEPs are ambitious and intend to create an environment where testing will be reduced to the point of redundancy.
"We need to ensure that any animal tests conducted are as humane as possible. These proposals would mean that testing on animals - particularly primates - could only be conducted if there was a strong scientific case for doing so and a clear potential benefit to human health.
"It would be irresponsible to impose a blanket ban on all animal testing when such tests could still drive breakthroughs in combating conditions such as cancer, Alzheimer's and Multiple Sclerosis.
"We must replace animals in experiments as soon as it becomes scientifically possible and this law is aimed at making that day come sooner, rather than later."