Skip to main content

International 3Rs Prize now open for applications. £30k prize (£2k personal award) for outstanding science with demonstrable 3Rs impacts.

NC3Rs | 20 Years: Pioneering Better Science
Office-led project

Review of global data requirements for plant protection products

At a glance

Completed
Current contacts

R

  • Reduction

Contents

Rainbow trout in a tank

Overview

Agrochemical companies develop their products with the intention of marketing them globally, and must therefore ensure that the substances have been tested in line with the regulatory requirements of all relevant geographic regions. Data requirements often differ across regions which can lead to increased and duplicative testing to enable the global registration of plant protection products (PPPs). Therefore, in collaboration with UK regulators and three agrochemical companies, we carried out a systematic review of the ecotoxicology vertebrate data requirements for several major global regions.

Through this review we identified, in the shorter term, opportunities for best practice within the current requirements to enable immediate reductions in the number of animals used to fulfil global data packages, and in the longer term opportunities to promote better harmonisation and mutual acceptance of data across different regions.

Poster

We presented a poster at SETAC Europe 2015 summarising the review and our preliminary recommendations, which can be downloaded below.