A ban on animal testing for cosmetics has been in force in the EU since 2013. Since then, neither the conduction of corresponding tests nor the trade with corresponding products is allowed. But this milestone of animal protection is now in danger.

Here, we provide information about carcinogenicity tests – tests to determine whether a substance can cause cancer or not. The knowledge is necessary to classify correctly, prohibit their use, provide limitations for their application or at least offer safety advice/ warnings. For example, the use of the pesticide Linuron has been banned in the EU since 2018, among other things because of its carcinogenic properties.^{1, 2}

Up to now, such tests have been performed on rodents. For some time, regulatory authorities, the Industry and academia agreed, that animal testing should be no longer mandatory – primarily because at the time of the beginning of such tests there is already sufficient information available from animal experiments to estimate a possible risk of cancer in humans. However, the corresponding regulation is still not deleted and these tests, which are to a large extent highly stressful for the animal, are continued.

To date, there is no standardized database for replacement methods that provides an overview of all methods, research results and application purposes. This is now changing - the federal government is funding the conceptual development of such a database in a first step until 2021 with 3 million euros.

Today, the 39th Animal Welfare Research Prize of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) was awarded. Dr. Anne-Katrin Rohlfing from the Department of Cardiology and Angiology at the University Hospital of Tübingen was honored for her new method of producing genetically modified platelets for basic research and testing.