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Cosmetics testing - back to the drawing board
It has now been confirmed that the ban on the marketing of animal-tested cosmetics (and cosmetics containing animal-tested ingredients) will be postponed until at least 1st June 2000. Under the 6th Amendment to the Cosmetics Directive, a ban would have come into force on 1st January 1998 unless the Commission's Committee for Adaptation to Technical Process (CAPT) made a recommendation for postponement by 1st January 1997. The 6th Amendment stated that such a recommendation was to be made if non-animal replacement methods of safety testing for cosmetics had not yet been developed and validated. It was obvious that replacements for all the animal-based safety tests could not be developed in time, but an attempt was made to find a compromise by banning the marketing of only those cosmetics where the finished product had been animal-tested. This failed because the wording of the 6th Amendment did not permit such a partial ban. In fact, the CAPT missed the January 1997 deadline but, at its meeting on 20th March, it approved the postponement of the ban.
During the consideration of the compromise proposal, another more serious problem was discovered. The basic principle underlying the General Agreement on Trades and Tariffs (GATT) is that a country cannot impose a barrier to trade in a 'like' product. The definition of a 'like' product does not include consideration of how that product was made. In other words, it would be an infringement of GATT regulations for the EU to ban the marketing of certain cosmetics because they - or their ingredients - had been tested on animals. Since this point appears to have identified a basic flaw in the mechanism used by the 6th Amendment to the Cosmetics Directive to implement a ban (by banning the marketing of animal-tested cosmetics) the CAPT has urged the Commission to bring forward a 7th Amendment. Presumably, by going back to the drawing board, they hope that the Commission can find a mechanism of implementing a ban which would not infringe GATT.
However, since the legal basis of a ban has to be redrafted, this will open up the whole issue to campaigning pressure once again. The animal protection groups will argue strongly against the idea that any ban should be dependent on the development and validation of non-animal alternatives, because they realise that will take at least another decade. They may decide to push for a ban on the actual testing of cosmetics or cosmetic ingredients on animals. However, some voices within the Commission may argue that the Cosmetics Directive is not an appropriate place for such a ban and that it should really be dealt with by an amendment of Directive 86/609, which regulates the use of animals for scientific purposes.
One other factor which may well delay matters even further is that, within the European Commission, the responsibility for cosmetics has moved from DG XXIV (Consumer Protection) to DG III (Industry). The combination of this change in management with the GATT issue may result in prolonged internal discussions within the Commission about how the cosmetic testing question should be handled.