GAIA

GAIA Global Action in the Interest of Animals welcomes the European Commissions ambition to strengthen the European Unions competitiveness, innovation capacity and strategic autonomy in the biotechnology sector. However, the future Biotech Act should go beyond accelerating the transition of discoveries from the laboratory to the market.

Mr Gaia called on the European Commission to explicitly recognise cultivated meat as a strategic food biotechnology under the future Biotech Act part II. Cultivated meat, produced from animal cells grown in a controlled environment, can simultaneously contribute to several European objectives: improving animal welfare, reducing certain environmental and health pressures linked to intensive livestock farming…

Filed in French · English published by the European Commission

The chemicals strategy and the legislation it generates must be an opportunity to finally move away from the cruel, outdated and unreliable dependence on animal testing in the European Union — something that is overwhelmingly supported by European citizens and is also necessary if we want to take truly sustainable steps.

Filed in Dutch · English published by the European Commission

Marketing standards are essential to respond to consumers’ demands, both in terms of food safety and to achieve additional objectives such as ensuring adequate levels of welfare to farmed animals and contributing to the fight against climate change. These objectives have been accepted and promoted by the European Commission, both through the Farm to Fork Strategy and in countless public statements.

GAIA welcomes the revision of the EIT Regulation and the Strategic Innovation Agenda and calls for New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) and animal-free innovation to be recognised as a cross-cutting priority within the future EIT framework.

GAIA (Global Action in the Interest of Animals) is a non-profit and one of the leading animal protection organisations in Belgium, with nearly 80,000 members. Since 1992, GAIA has campaigned for stronger animal welfare and environmental protection through public actions and targeted campaigns to eliminate animal suffering.

The EU’s bans on cosmetics tests on animals, and the sale of animal-tested cosmetics, arose from strong and unequivocal public and political support for the idea that animals should not suffer and die in laboratories for the sake of cosmetics.

GAIA welcomes the revision of ECHAs founding regulation and stresses that the Agencys mandate must be fully aligned with the EUs chemicals sustainability strategy and with the legal obligation to reduce and replace animal experiments. Although REACH already requires the promotion of alternative methods and the use of animals only as a last resort, animal testing remains widespread.