Report Card > Natural Resources Defense Council

Grade:

PETA wrote to the Natural Resources Defense Council on March 9th asking for its position on animal-testing, and the organization has yet to respond to PETA’s letter or endorse our statement:

• calling on EPA to increase its funding and use of non-animal test methods; and

• endorsing the use of only those new test methods that have been rigorously assessed by the Interagency Coordinating Committee for the Validation of Alternative Methods and found to be scientifically valid.

The Natural Resources Defense Council has aggressively lobbied the EPA to initiate several large animal-testing initiatives, including the EPA’s Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program (EDSP) and the use of a nonvalidated developmental neurotoxicity test (DNT) in the assessment of pesticides, and has actively opposed legislation that would ensure that animal tests are held to the same level of scrutiny as non-animal methods.

The EDSP is by far the largest animal-testing program of all time, with the potential to kill tens of millions of animals. Dissatisfied with the rate at which the EDSP was being developed, the Natural Resources Defense Council 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, the Natural Resources Defense Council has demonstrated such strident opposition to proper validation that it even sought to prevent the passage of the ICCVAM Authorization Act. Click here to download PETA’s EDSP factsheet.

The Natural Resources Defense Council has stridently opposed any and every effort to minimize animal suffering and death in the EDSP. This organization has not only sought to intervene in our lawsuit against the EPA, but has gone so far as to attempt to have our lawsuit dismissed, alleging that animal protection concerns are irrelevant. The Natural Resources Defense Council has even characterized PETA’s promotion of proper validation of test methods as "repeated demands … for additional, time-consuming procedural and substantive roadblocks."

Another aspect of the lawsuit against the EPA involved the reassessment of pesticides. In this regard, the Natural Resources Defense Council coordinated a joint letter calling on the EPA to require that all pesticides undergo developmental neurotoxicity testing on animals. The nonvalidated DNT, which kills between 1,200 and 2,500 animals every time it is performed, involves poisoning rats with toxic chemicals throughout their pregnancy and while they nurse their newborn pups. The pups are then subjected to a series of behavioral tests, after which they are killed and their brains are examined. Shockingly, 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. Click here to download PETA’s DNT factsheet.

What you can do

Please send polite letters urging the Natural Resources Defense Council to withdraw its support for animal-testing. Click here for points you can include in your letter. Send letters to:

Frances Beinecke, Executive Director
Natural Resources Defense Council
40 W. 20th St.
New York, NY 10011
Fax: 212-727-1773
E-Mail: fbeinecke@nrdc.org