IIVS Announces Initiation by EPA of a Pilot Program to Evaluate Non-Animal Eye-Irritati...( GAITHERSBURG Md. July 3...)

GAITHERSBURG, Md., July 30 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The EPA has initiated a new program to evaluate the use of non-animal methods to replace the Draize test for eye irritation labeling for antimicrobial cleaning products. The is the first program of its kind and demonstrates the Agency's commitment to evaluate non-animal methods when valid alternatives are available.

IIVS was an integral part of the collaboration that led up to this initiative. Seven leading consumer product companies - The Procter & Gamble Company, Clorox, Colgate Palmolive, The Dial Corporation, Ecolab, JohnsonDiversey, Inc. and S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc. - provided data from in vitro as well as previously conducted animal studies on more than 300 representative cleaning products. IIVS, acting as a neutral party, collated the data, filled gaps with additional non-animal testing, and analyzed the predictive capacity of the alternative approach. Strong support from the animal protection community was also crucial to the success of the program.

"The acceptance of non-animal data by the EPA under this pilot program is a tremendous step forward in accelerating the application of scientifically sound alternative methods" said Dr Rodger Curren, President of IIVS. "IIVS was proud to contribute our experience and scientific expertise to both generate and analyze these complex data sets. We deeply appreciate the credence the EPA's leadership gives to in vitro methods and hope that this will lead to EPA guidelines that will more permanently cover this type of approach."

The goal of the EPA's pilot program is to evaluate the effectiveness of a non-animal testing method to replace the current Draize rabbit eye test. This approximately 18-month project encompasses the use of three in vitro assays: the Bovine Corneal Opacity and Permeability test (the use of eyes from cattle recently slaugh
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