Problems related with toxicological tests on animals:

• Results non applicable on humans, random extrapolations.
• Very expensive tests (large number of animals, staff, equipment…).
• Long evaluation (several years before getting results that would be valid for animals).
• Chemical interactions between products (cocktails) are not tested.
• Long period toxicity cannot be tested.
• Impossibility to status on the teratogenicity of a substance for humans (around 50% match between results on humans and other animals).

So, what is the point of animal experiment?

Cheaper, faster and accurate animal-free scientific methods could be used 2, but it wouldn’t please the chemical corporations that produce around 400,000 tons of chemical substances every year, offering a turnover of 500 Billion Euros.3

It is likely that the greatest part of these drugs and chemical products would be put off market if we were to discover their real carcinogenic (C), mutagenic (M) and reprotoxic (R) effects 4.

Tests based on humans data (cell culture, toxicogenomic, bio-informatics, etc…) won’t let any cheating or mistakes on the results where animal tests does.

Alternative tests:

As for the financial aspect of alternative methods in France, the only few bits of information the government dares to give us are several years old.
It appears that only 800 000 francs (around 122 000 Euros) has been dedicated to alternative methods between 1994 and 1997 (30500 Euros per year), compared to the tens of billion francs in animal experimentations.
Moreover, according to the Journal Official of the 1st of November 2005 there would be 434 laboratories authorized to proceed experimentation on animals. Despite several requests from different associations, the French Research Minister refuses to reveal its real numbers.

We know that on a European scale, the FP7 (PCRD in French) 5 has allocated 150 million Euros to develop alternative methods during the past 2O years.

The European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods (ECVAM) “has only developed 15 alternative methods in fifteen years, in which five are redundant, reducing it to just 10 new ones, one each year.”6

Food additives:

The food additives are also tested on animals before being approved by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

Their scientific group of evaluation “includes a study of all relevant scientific tests and any data on toxicity available, including genotoxicity and human exposure, from which the scientific group draws conclusions on the security of this substance”.

Alternative tests are here described as relevant and scientifically valid, giving us hope on future animal-free experiment; moreover, it reveals how noxious the food additives can be, which abound in our products, mostly industrial:

• Natural additives, produced from the mineral, vegetal or animal world, they are not riskless for human and animal health.
• Synthetic additives, created to substitute the natural additives that are more expensive, can be dangerous, in particular if it requires solvents that may not be totally washed.
• Artificial additives are purely man-made chemicals, they cannot be found in nature.

Here is a link to a website listing all the food additives and their effects: http://www.cspinet.org/reports/chemcuisine.htm

Our advice:

• Make sure to often read the labels
• Eat organic and balanced food as much as possible
• Use natural cleaning products
• Avoid industrial food products

• 1. Fiche_afsset_toxicologie.pdf (Agence Française de Sécurité Sanitaire de l'Environnement et du Travail)
• 2. See for example Itai Chipinda and his colleagues’ research on Better Animal-Free Test for Chemicals that Can Cause Contact Dermatitis
• 3. Mission commune d'information sur le bilan et les conséquences de la contamination par l'amiante (Audition Sénat, le mercredi 22 juin 2005)
• 4. (C): Substance that is an agent directly involved in the exacerbation of cancer or in the increase of its propagation. (M): agent that changes the genetic material, increasing the frequency of mutations above the natural background level. (R): Substance reducing or being toxic on reproduction for examples of CMR-substances in our every-day life, see this website http://www.kemi.se/templates/Page____4018.aspx
• 5. Seventh Framework Program for research and technological development
• 6. Expérimentation animale : développer des méthodes alternatives (l'Hémicycle, 15 déc 2009)