Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether her Department is taking steps to help encourage companies to transition away from testing products on animals.

There has been significant progress in moving away from using animals to assess chemicals hazards, although there are some hazards where there is no immediate prospect of developing a non-animal alternative that could be used as the standard test method across the full range of chemicals. The UK contributes internationally to the development of non-animal alternatives for chemical testing through collaborative research programmes and work at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which develops internationally standardised tools and guidance to support companies and regulators in the use of non-animal methods. Defra also co-chairs a cross-Whitehall working group focused on the integration of non-animal methods into chemicals and wider risk assessment where they are equal to or offer improvements to accuracy, speed and efficiency. Our approach to regulation aligns with this direction of travel; REACH contains the last resort principle, which means that an animal study can only be carried out once a company has exhausted other ways of assessing the chemical's hazard.