Reviewing OECD Test Guidelines

One of the main objectives of the project is to provide a list of potential update needs related to OECD Test Guidelines based on input from the international scientific and regulatory communities. It is then up to the OECD member countries to take any further actions based on the knowledge gained through the project.  

In order to facilitate any follow up activities, the project team is asked to evaluate the proposed update needs against certain criteria. The criteria will allow to distinguish most urgent as well as easy to fix updates from more long term and resource intensive ones. 

Presenting the update needs together with these facts is considered as a very helpful basis for OECD member countries if they are considering taking the lead in promoting individual updates.  

To incorporate the opinion of international scientific experts, a survey has been developed. The questionnaire was sent to international experts and stakeholders to gain an overview of the requests for updates and changes of OECD Test Guidelines. Experts not contacted directly were also very much welcomed to fill in the questionnaire. Participants in the survey had the opportunity to comment and propose changes on single or multiple OECD Test Guidelines relevant to environmental assessment.

Based on the survey results several international workshops were set up to discuss the survey results and proposed updates related to environmental aspects in OECD Test Guidelines. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, workshops were conducted mainly online and various time frames were available which respected the different time shifts for participants.  

The results from the survey and the workshop discussions has been summarized and concerted into a report.