NRDC’s Anti-Science, Anti-Animal Agenda
EPA is required by law and common sense to use only validated tests when screening chemicals for potential endocrine disrupting effects. The Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods (ICCVAM) has an extensive program underway to validate potential tests, including those that "refine, reduce, or replace animal use" to ensure that they yield scientifically meaningful results.
While EPA recognizes that the "science related to measuring and demonstrating endocrine disruption is in its infancy, so validated methods of testing...are still being developed" the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has little patience for science. While the NGO’s enthusiasm for conducting a massive yet meaningless animal testing program has raised concerns from numerous stakeholders, none is more passionate than the animal rights activists at PETA.
PETA notes that "dissatisfied with the rate at which the EDSP was being developed..." NRDC "sued the EPA in an attempt to force the agency to begin the testing process sooner––without properly validating the screens and tests that would be used. In fact..." NRDC "has demonstrated such strident opposition to proper validation that it even sought to prevent the passage of the ICCVAM Authorization Act." PETA also explains that the EDSP isn’t the only program where NRDC favors the needless use of animal tests. For example, NRDC lobbied EPA to proceed with a developmental neurotoxicity testing (DNT) program on rats even though "EPA officials have publicly admitted that the rat is not ‘the right model’ for humans and that they do not even know how to interpret the results of the DNT."
You don’t have to oppose all animal testing to recognize that the testing programs NRDC is advocating are not only inhumane, they are bad science.
See PETA’s Greenwash Report Card on NRDC
See PETA commentary on the EDSP
See EPA EDSP Primer
See ICCVAM website
