The EU Commission has published its roadmap towards phasing out animal testing for chemical safety assessments. The roadmap sets out a clear objective of “phasing out animal testing at the earliest opportunity” across the EU, recognising the need to protect animals and preserve the integrity of safety assessments for human, animal and environmental health. This is supported by 22 actions and more than 30 targeted recommendations across three key pillars: 

• Making change happen – towards phasing out animal use 

• Keeping Europe at the forefront of research and innovation 

• Working together in Europe and beyond 

These actions and recommendations include: 

• Replacing, reducing or refining animal testing in the short-to-long term, including: 

• Replacing animal studies with computational models for acute oral toxicity and pharmacokinetic modelling 

• Replacing animal studies with in vitro assays to predict and measure developmental neurotoxicity, malformations and embryofoetal lethality, pyrogenicity, and sensitisation 

• Making legislative proposals to implement short-term actions in relevant European Union legislation by the end of 2029.  

• Identifying regulatory needs for alternatives to animal testing and reporting on these regularly.  

• Providing information on options for funding activities that support the validation, standardisation or qualification of non-animal approaches. 

• Enabling AI to support the roadmap by accelerating the development and integration of AI-based tools. 

• Strengthening European and international collaboration to ensure that the roadmap will be effectively implemented, the acceptance of non-animal approaches continues to be actively promoted, and to identify any additional training needs on non-animal approaches. 

• Establishing key indicators for progress and reporting purposes, including a publicly available dashboard 

This publication represents a significant shift in the future of chemical safety testing and the use of non-animal methods, highlighting how both science and overall assessment frameworks must evolve to achieve this goal. 

Although our work at Replacing Animal Research focuses predominantly on replacing animals in biomedical research, we strongly welcome this roadmap. Progress in regulatory testing will help drive progress across other areas, and commitments to invest in, validate and adopt non-animal approaches will help strengthen the wider shift away from animal use in research. Alongside the UK Government’s Replacing Animals in Science strategy, it also signals growing international recognition that non-animal approaches must be prioritised in science. 

This roadmap is a fantastic step towards replacing animals in science, and we look forward to seeing these vital actions being implemented over the coming years. 

Read the full EU Commission report.

Read our full Policy Approach to see how we’re pushing for change in the UK.