REACH

The beginning of REACH

Prior to 1981, chemicals did not have to be strictly safety tested before being put onto the market. The European Commission was rightly concerned over the possible risks posed by chemicals not stringently tested, so it created REACH to systematically assess the safety of an estimated 30,000 chemicals that had already been placed on the market.

Poisoned to death

The European Commission backed plans to poison millions of animals to test these chemicals. Their initial proposals failed to mention anything about alternatives to animal testing or the sharing of data. In response, the ECEAE launched a campaign to stop this mass suffering, proposing instead humane, reliable and biologically relevant non-animal testing methods.

Half a decade of campaigning

Hand-in of 500,000 signatures to the European Commission in Brussels in 2002.

What followed was five years of some of the most intense lobbying and campaigning the ECEAE has ever undertaken. In 2001, the ECEAE produced a ground-breaking report entitled ‘The Way Forward: a non-animal testing strategy for toxicity testing’ which started a major debate in Europe about the future of humane testing methods.

Life-saving amendments

The ECEAE was successful in campaigning for some life-saving amendments to the REACH legislation. Thanks to five years of intensive ECEAE lobbying, the use of alternatives has been placed centrally in the legislation. Article 1 specifically states that one of the aims of REACH is the ‘promotion of alternative methods of assessment of hazards of substances.’ This means that the chemical companies must use alternatives to animal tests where they are available, and puts an impetus on the European Union to develop and validate new alternatives. Many of the thousands of chemicals to be evaluated under REACH have already been animal-tested years ago by the companies that manufacture them. Thanks to the ECEAE's campaign, data-sharing became a central feature of the legislation.

Tens of thousands of animals saved

ECEAE protest outside the ECHA in Helsinki in 2010.

Another success was the implementation of the so-called 45-day-rule as a result of our intervention. Chemical companies must first propose planned animal testing to the chemicals authority ECHA. The authority then gave third parties the opportunity in a public consultation process to submit comments that show that the required data already exists or can be determined by means other than animal testing. We used this possibility over a period of 8 years (2010 - 2018) to prevent as many animal experiments as possible. We were able to achieve some great successes and save many tens of thousands of animals from an agonising death.