PARIS – Symrise has lost an appeal against a European Chemicals Agency, or ECHA, decision requiring animal testing on cosmetics ingredients.  

The choice handed down Wednesday to the German fragrance and flavors supplier by the European Court of Justice’s General Court requires animal testing on two formerly approved ingredients used exclusively in sunscreens – UV filter homosalate and 2-ethylhexyl salicylate.  

“This decision renders the European Union and United Kingdom bans on animal testing for cosmetics virtually meaningless, as animal testing requirements to analyse the protection of latest chemicals – as specified by the EU’s fundamental chemicals laws, REACH, and enforced by the European Chemicals Agency, ECHA – have been adjudged to take precedence over the bans on the testing of cosmetics ingredients on animals,” NGO Cruelty Free International, or CFI, said in an announcement. 

Cosmetics ingredients, as chemicals, fall inside REACH and the EU Cosmetics Regulation, which incorporates bans on animal testing. 

The Cosmetics Regulation bans on animal testing — whereby ingredients can’t be utilized in cosmetics products in the event that they have been tested on animals anywhere on this planet — were fully put into force in March 2013. And today, beauty firms largely test their cosmetics on laboratory-grown reconstructed skin. 

Nevertheless, in August 2020, the ECHA announced that some substances should be tested on animals even in the event that they are only destined to be used in cosmetics. The ECHA argued that an assessment is required to ascertain if there’s a risk for employees in factories while the products are made. So animal testing is being requested for lots of of other ingredients, as well. 

The topic of animal testing got here back into the fore in the wonder space in a case from March 2018 that involved Symrise. The ECHA ruled Symrise must perform some toxicity tests on animals for the 2 sunscreen-related ingredients. 

Symrise appealed, but that was dismissed by ECHA’s own board of appeal in August 2021. The supplier subsequently launched two cases within the General Court to annul that August ruling. 

The ruling Wednesday does say that under REACH’s Article 25 that beauty manufacturers should “generate information obtained by means aside from animal testing ‘at any time when possible’ and to undertake such testing ‘only as a final resort.” However the General Court ruled that animal testing should be carried out under REACH where no alternatives can be found. 

“The Court, wrongly in CFI’s view, sidestepped a provision in REACH which says that the REACH testing requirements apply ‘without prejudice’ to the cosmetics bans – in other words, those bans should take precedence,” CFI said. “The ruling, subsequently, activates its head what EU residents have been promised. The cosmetics bans were introduced before REACH – hence the necessity for the ‘without prejudice’ clause.” 

CFI said that the 2 sunscreen ingredients’ toxicity tests that ECHA requires will involve greater than 5,500 animals, including rats, rabbits and fish, with a high degree of suffering before their death. 

Symrise can appeal each judgements. 

European residents have been vocal about their wish to finish cosmetics testing on animals.  

“Over 1.2 million people recently demanded the protection and strengthening of the EU ban on animal testing for cosmetics by signing the ‘Save Cruelty Free Cosmetics’ European Residents’ Initiative [or ECI], which was launched in August 2021 by a coalition of European animal protection groups including Cruelty Free Europe,” CFI said. 

In consequence, the European Commission said it could begin planning the phase out of animal testing for all chemicals, even though it didn’t address ECI-raised issues. 

“The general public has every right to feel their trust within the cosmetics bans has been undermined,” said Emma Grange, Cruelty Free Europe’s director of sciences and regulatory affairs. “The European Union has promised to begin to attract up a roadmap for the full phase-out of chemicals animal testing in Europe. We want the EU to come back clean with the general public – that if the cosmetics testing bans remain so toothless, then we should not as far along that path as they thought.  

“The method now must be accelerated, no matter any further appeal within the courts,” she said.