In a move that is sure to bring smiles on the faces of all animal lovers, Health Canada has announced that it plans to do away with the mandatory, year-long pesticide safety test using dogs. Normally beagles are used as they are docile animals.
"It's just scientific convention," said Troy Seidle with Humane Society International (HSI) in Toronto.
The dogs are exposed to the pesticides, either with their food, or made to inhale them. After the trial period is over, the dogs are killed and dissected to study the effects of the pesticides on their systems.
In a step forward to stop this cruel practice, Sean Upton, Health Canada's spokesperson, said that it was working toward "the elimination of unnecessary animal testing."
PETA has been campaigning against the procedure since 2011.
"We would have liked to see something happen sooner. They are fed pesticides in their diet, or exposed via inhalation devices placed over their noses, every day. They're looking for (harmful) effects on the liver, kidney, anything where the pesticides may be having an effect on the animal," said Patricia Bishop with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
The United States and the European Union have already done away with the year-long test.
"Between 2009 and 2012, HSI led a successful scientific lobbying campaign in Europe to dramatically reduce animal testing requirements for biocides (non-food pesticides) and plant protection products (food-use pesticides). But when the new EU biocides regulation was published in June 2012, more than 80 technical amendments proposed by HSI's Science Team had been taken up. Collectively, these amendments have the potential to reduce the number of animals used to test a new biocidal active substance by an unprecedented 40 to 50 percent compared to previous requirements - making this the largest one-time regulatory animal test reduction ever achieved."
The United States followed in May 2012.
"Humane Society International and The Humane Society of the United States welcome the EPA's recent animal testing policy as a step in the right direction, but urges the agency to go further to bring U.S. pesticide regulations into line with the global scientific state-of-the-art and best practices concerning replacement, reduction and refinement of animal testing," said Kate Willett, director of regulatory testing at The Humane Society of the United States."
And Brazil, in October 2015.
"Beagle dogs have been suffering terribly in long-term laboratory testing, in which their food is poisoned with a pesticide chemical for an entire year before they are ultimately killed. Pesticide regulators in the United States, European Union, and India have already removed this cruel test from their regulations, and HSI is delighted that ANVISA has heeded our call to follow this ethical and scientifically correct example," said Antoniana Ottoni, legislative assessor of Humane Society International in Brazil.
Scientists say that "a 1-year toxicity study in dogs is no longer a scientifically justifiable core data requirement for the safety assessment of pesticides."
"Most of the time, any effect that they were seeing, they already saw in the 90-day [test], so they didn't need the one year. They weren't getting any additional information," Bishop added.
