Humane Society International (HSI) Europe is actively working to put an end to animal testing—permanently.

In partnership with affiliates The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and Humane Society Legislative Fund, HSI is campaigning globally to promote greater reliance on proven non-animal testing methods. HSI is actively working to implement a landmark vision of “21st century toxicology” that would see animal tests that are decades old, costly, slow and of dubious relevance to people replaced by ultra-modern, efficient and human-relevant non-animal methods.

This vision was articulated in July 2007 by an expert panel of the U.S. National Research Council (NRC), which included a HSUS/HSI representative as one of its key members. The cornerstone of the NRC vision is a “systems biology” approach to testing, which would combine robot-automated human cell and gene tests with sophisticated computer models to develop an understanding of how chemicals affect fundamental biological pathways in the human body that can lead to adverse health effects.

Key advantages of the proposed new approach include the capacity to examine a much greater number of chemicals, mixtures and health effects than can be tested on animals, and at more realistic exposure levels; a substantial reduction in testing costs, time and animal use; and the grounding of regulatory decisions on human rather than rodent biology.

In February 2008, the U.S. federal government took its first step toward implementing the NRC vision with the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the National Toxicology Program, the National Institutes of Health Chemical Genomics Center, and the Environmental Protection Agency. The MOU [PDF] outlines a strategy for interagency co-operation in “the research, development, validation, and translation of new and innovative test methods that characterize key steps in toxicity pathways.”

Shortly thereafter, EU regulators and industry—under the auspices of the European Partnership on Alternative Approaches to Animal Testing (EPAA)—convened a meeting of eminent scientists to discuss and provide recommendations regarding “new perspectives on safety.”

The HSUS/HSI welcomes these various initiatives, but recognises that in order for the NRC vision to make a significant impact on regulatory toxicology in the foreseeable future, a much larger and internationally co-ordinated research effort will be needed. HSUS/HSI is therefore calling on the EU, U.S. and other world governments and corporations to commit to a “big biology” initiative—akin to the Human Genome Project of the 1990s—backed by at least 100 million Euros in public and corporate funding per year for the next decade.