Initiatives to Decrease Redundancy in Animal Testing of Pesticides

In 2003 members of IlSI – HeSI started a project called ACSA (agrochemical safety assessment). the purpose of this project was to evaluate how toxicity testing for agrochemicals could be done if the testing requirements were to be designed from scratch. the background of this question was the notion that our society continues to add testing requirements to an already substantial package without really looking at the overall picture, i.e. what value does each study have relative to the risk assessment and risk management process. the ACSA group was made up of distinguished academics, people from regulatory authorities and toxicologists from industry. the results of this work were published in 2006 in a special issue of Critical Reviews in Toxicology. the main conclusions can be summarised as follows: 1) With the current study requirements we are focusing too much on long-term, very low exposure issues (which require substantial resources in toxicity testing) rather than on shortterm or intermittent exposure scenarios. 2) Improved and early recognition of relevant toxicological effects will help to address the particular profile that a chemical may have in a more focused way. 3) Several studies are either of limited or no use (for risk assessment) or can be redesigned in such a way that the same amount of information can be obtained with far fewer resources.