Report Card Grades » Children’s Environmental Health Network » Grade: D

PETA wrote to the Children’s Environmental Health Network to determine its position on the use of animals in chemical poisoning tests and to solicit its endorsement of a 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.

PETA wrote to the Children’s Environmental Health Network because it endorsed widespread animal-testing by signing on to a joint letter calling for the use of nonvalidated animal test methods such as the EPA’s developmental neurotoxicity test (DNT). The 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.

The Children’s Environmental Health Network has also pressured the EPA with regard to animal-testing in its Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program (EDSP). In public comments to the EPA, the Network called for developmental toxicity testing in animals during the first phase of the program and a "requirement that all chemicals be subject to it, without exception." It went on to call for the exposure of animals to multiple doses of chemicals over multiple generations and for the inclusion of new and obscure behavioral effects—all of which would significantly increase the already massive number of animals who are slated to die in the EDSP. Click here to download PETA’s EDSP factsheet.

What You Can Do
Please send polite letters urging the Children’s Environmental Health Network to withdraw its support for animal-testing. Click here for points you can include in your letter. Send letters to:

Nsedu Obot Witherspoon, Executive Director
Children’s Environmental Health Network
110 Maryland Ave. N.E., Ste. 511
Washington, DC 20002
202-543-8797 (fax)
nobot@cehn.org