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EURL ECVAM Issues Status Report on Alternatives

Tuesday, February 09, 2021

NTP Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods (NICEATM).

EURL ECVAM has issued its 2020 “Status Report on the Development, Validation and Regulatory Acceptance of Alternative Methods and Approaches.” The report is available at https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/publication/eur-scientific-and-technical-research-reports/non-animal-methods-science-and-regulation

The status report describes research, development, and validation activities, as well as initiatives that promote the regulatory and international adoption and use of alternative approaches and their dissemination. Activities described in the report include:

Developing guidance for moving from traditional animal tests to non-animal assays for vaccine quality control.
Validating methods to identify substances with the potential to affect the thyroid signaling pathway, damage DNA, induce skin and respiratory sensitization, or harm fish.
Exploring how to apply existing toxicity information to predicting different toxicity endpoints.

EURL ECVAM, which is part of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, coordinates research and validation studies on alternatives to animal testing within the European Union. EURL ECVAM also shares knowledge about and promotes use of alternative methods.

EPA Finalizes Guidance to Waive Toxicity Tests on Animal Skin

Tuesday, January 19, 2021

U.S. EPA. Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention

On January 19, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published final guidance that will allow researchers to forego testing chemicals on animal skin in certain circumstances. The “Final Guidance for Waiving Acute Dermal Toxicity Tests for Pesticide Single-Active Ingredient and Supporting Retrospective Analysis” allows for data waivers for acute dermal studies for single active ingredients used to develop end-use products. The document includes a policy statement to waive all acute lethality dermal studies for single active ingredients.
The new final guidance supports EPA efforts to identify opportunities for test waivers that can reduce animal use for testing required for pesticide registration. It also supports the broader EPA goal of eliminating the use of mammals for chemical safety testing by 2035.
The January 19 announcement is available at https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USAEPAOPPT/bulletins/2ba0cd2/. A link to the guidance and more information about EPA waivers of animal tests are available at https://www.epa.gov/pesticide-registration/bridging-or-waiving-data-requirements

APHIS Posts Investigative and Enforcement Services Annual Enforcement Data Reports

Monday, January 11, 2021

USDA. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

Animal Care Posts Transcripts from Recent Animal Welfare Act Bird Standards Listening Sessions

Monday, November 09, 2020

USDA. APHIS. Animal care.

Animal Care Posts Transcripts from Recent Animal Welfare Act Bird Standards Listening Sessions.

EPA Announces Guidance to Waive Toxicity Tests on Animal Skin, New Webpages on Metrics and NAMs

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

NTP Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods (NICEATM)

On October 7, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requested public comment on draft guidance that would allow researchers to forego testing chemicals on animal skin in certain circumstances. Based on a retrospective analysis conducted by EPA, which concluded that such studies provide little to no added value in regulatory decision-making, the proposed guidance would allow waivers for studies on single active ingredients used in pesticides. This guidance, when finalized, is expected to save up to 750 test animals annually from unnecessary testing, as well as EPA, industry, and laboratory resources. A news release announcing the release of the draft guidance is available at https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-announces-guidance-waive-toxicity-tests-animal-skin.

A webpage summarizing EPA’s strategic vision for adopting new approach methodologies (NAMs) is available at https://www.epa.gov/pesticide-science-and-assessing-pesticide-risks/strategic-vision-adopting-new-approach-methodologies. Three webpages linked from this page have details of EPA activities in this area.

EPA has implemented activities and policies that have reduced the number of animals used in testing and saved resources for the Agency and stakeholders. A new page on the EPA website provides measures of cost and animal savings following these activities. The page is available at https://www.epa.gov/pesticide-science-and-assessing-pesticide-risks/adopting-21st-century-science-methodologies-metrics.
In addition to the dermal study waivers described above, EPA has identified a number of contexts in which waivers of required studies can be considered, reducing the number of animals required for testing. These are listed at https://www.epa.gov/pesticide-science-and-assessing-pesticide-risks/adopting-21st-century-science-methodologies.
EPA has taken steps to advance the use of computational and non-animal approaches to provide information on chemical hazard and risk assessment. Many of these, such as the Collaborative Acute Toxicity Modeling Suite (CATMoS) and skin sensitization approaches, were developed or evaluated in collaboration with NICEATM. Details are available at https://www.epa.gov/pesticide-science-and-assessing-pesticide-risks/adopting-21st-century-science-methodologies-0.

Animal Care Transitions to Sending Annual Report Packets Electronically

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

USDA. APHIS. Animal Care.

APHIS Seeks Input on a Policy on Free-living Wild Species in Their Natural Habitat

Friday, September 11, 2020

USDA. APHIS. Animal Care.

USDA to Launch Updated Animal Welfare Act Compliance Database and Public Search Tool

Monday, August 24, 2020

USDA. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

APHIS Announces Virtual Listening Sessions Seeking Public Input on Regulations Regarding The Welfare Of Birds Not Bred For Use In Research

Wednesday, August 19, 2020

USDA. APHIS. Animal Care.

ICE Version 3.1 Now Available

Friday, July 31, 2020

HHS. NIH. The NTP Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods (NICEATM)

July 24, NICEATM released an update of the Integrated Chemical Environment (ICE). ICE provides data and tools to help develop, assess, and interpret chemical safety tests. This update adds the following features to these ICE tools:

Search: query results can now be sent directly to the EPA CompTox Chemicals Dashboard.
In Vitro to In Vivo Extrapolation (IVIVE): assays can be selected based on mode of action; results can be filtered by mode of action or toxicity endpoint annotation.
Chemical Characterization: principal component analysis plots provide an additional option for visualization of chemical properties.

Other new resources in ICE 3.1 include:

New Chemical Quick Lists: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) List of Active Ingredients and EPA List of Inert Ingredients Food and Nonfood Use.
Additional metadata provided in results downloads.
New tooltips and information buttons to help users set up queries.

ICE is available at https://ice.ntp.niehs.nih.gov/.

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