Burges Salmon’s environment and product stewardship team has saved a global consortium of chemical companies hundreds of thousands of Euros and prevented unnecessary animal testing after a successful challenge of a decision of the European Chemicals Agency in Helsinki.
Under the EU-wide REACH Regulation on the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals, the European Chemicals Agency can require those who place substances on the EU internal market to test those substances for hazardous properties. The client consortium on the receiving end of the decision believed it was too onerous and that it did not take into account the potential for ‘reading across’ from the results from other similar substances to avoid unnecessary testing. Burges Salmon represented the consortium in its appeal to the Board of Appeal, also in Helsinki, and brought together the technical and legal arguments into a single persuasive submission.
The Burges Salmon team was Owen Jones and Andrew Rabet.