End of animal testing in sight! European Parliament urges for action plan on the initiative of Party for the Animals
Last week, European Parliament supported the call for an action plan to end animal testing in Europe as quickly as possible. Thanks to a proposal by the Dutch Party for the Animals, this action plan must include concrete targets to phase out the number of animal tests. Good news for the 22 million laboratory animals that are used in European labs every single year!
A beagle in an animal testing facility. Photo by LPT-Schließen.
In Europe and elsewhere, millions of mice, dogs, rabbits and other animals are still used as laboratory animals, to experiment on. They are used in education and for testing new chemicals for medicine, agriculture, cosmetics, and the clothing industry, amongst others. This leads to indescribable animal suffering and costs a lot of time and money, while it has by now been proven that animal tests are inadequate. More and more non-animal alternatives are available that are better suited for research and education, and for testing the safety of substances.
In a historic resolution, the European Parliament now calls on the European Commission to stimulate these non-animal research methods and to amend EU-legislation that mandates the use of animal tests, for example in chemical research. Thanks to a proposal by the Party for the Animals, this resolution also pushes for the development of an ambitious time schedule that includes concrete and attainable interim targets.
MEP Anja Hazekamp of the Party for the Animals, one of the initiators of this resolution, welcomes the broad support: “The EU has been promising for thirty years now to reduce the number of laboratory animals that are abused. We need an action plan with concrete targets. This action plan is a win-win for humans, animals, and the environment. We should use science, not animals.”
Sign the petition for a Europe free of animal-testing!
NGOs such as PETA, Cruelty Free Europe, the Eurogroup for Animals, the European Coalition to End Animal Experiments and the Humane Society International Europe call on the European Commission to heed the will of the European Parliament and to finally get to work in realizing an animal-testing free Europe. European citizens are speaking out as well in the new European Citizens’ Initiative ‘Save Cruelty Free Cosmetics – Commit to a Europe without Animal Testing’, which was signed by over 120,000 people within two weeks. Join the petition now!