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 is 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 are also very much welcomed to fill in the questionnaire. Participants in the survey will have the opportunity to comment and propose changes on single or multiple OECD Test Guidelines relevant to environmental assessment.
The survey results will be evaluated in the course of the project based on prioritisation criteria, in order to create a first proposal on which OECD Test Guidelines should be discussed further in specific workshops.

Based on the survey results several international workshops will be set up to discuss the survey results and proposed updates related to environmental aspects in OECD Test Guidelines. The workshops are planned for October to December of 2021. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, workshops will be conducted mainly online and various time frames will be available which respect the different time shifts fro participants.  

The results from the survey and the workshop discussions will be summarized and concerted into concrete proposals for updates on OECD Test Guidelines. The German WNT member supported by Fraunhofer ITEM and IME will present the results at the WNT meeting in March 2022.