Non-Animal Approaches for Consumer Safety Risk Assessments: Unilever’s Scientific Research Programme

By Carmichael, Paul - Davies, Michael - Dent, Matt - Fentem, Julia - Fletcher, Samantha - Gilmour, Nicola - MacKay, Cameron - Maxwell, Gavin - Merolla, Leona - Pease, Camilla - Reynolds, Fiona - Westmoreland, Carl

Non-animal based approaches to risk assessment are now routinely used for assuring consumer safety for some endpoints (such as skin irritation) following considerable investment in developing and applying new methods over the past 20 years. Unilever’s research programme into non-animal approaches for safety assessment is currently focused on the application of new technologies to risk assessments in the areas of skin allergy, cancer and general toxicity (including inhalation toxicity). In all of these areas, a long-term investment is essential to increase the scientific understanding of the underlying biological and chemical processes that we believe will ultimately form a sound basis for novel risk assessment approaches. Our research programme in these priority areas consists of in-house research as well as Unilever-sponsored academic research, involvement with EU-funded projects (e.g. Sens-it-iv, carcino -GENOMICS), participation in cross-industry collaborative research (e.g. COLIPA, EPAA) and ongoing involvement with other scientific initiatives on non-animal approaches to risk assessment (e.g. UK NC3Rs, US ‘Human Toxicology Project’ consortium).