The revision of Directive 86/609/EEC provides an unprecedented opportunity for the European Union to increase efforts to replace all animal experiments through carefully targeted and co-ordinated research to develop, validate and implement non-animal methods. This could save millions of laboratory animals and improve the quality of research and testing.
We call on EU Member States, the European Commission and the Parliament to use the review of Directive 86/609/EEC to ensure that:
1. EU initiatives to replace laboratory animals will apply to all categories of experiments;
2. A publicly accessible, comprehensive database of replacement methods is established by the EU; and
3. A duty is placed on all Member States, institutions and individual scientists to seek, develop and implement methods to replace animal experiments and make immediate use of existing replacement techniques.