Nominations for the 2013 Lush Prize Awards for Animal-free Toxicology Open on April 15th

Nominations for the 2013 Lush Prize Awards for Animal-free Toxicology Open on April 15^th

The 2013 Lush Prize, the biggest international annual prize in the non-animal testing sector, opened for nominations on April 15th. A joint project between the global handmade cosmetics company and research group Ethical Consumer, the prize is designed to help change the face of safety testing across the world.

Nominations for this year's prize are now sought across five separate categories:

Science (for the development of replacement non-animal tests)

Training (training researchers in non-animal tests)

Lobbying (policy interventions to promote the use of replacements)

Public Awareness (public awareness-raising of ongoing testing)

Young Researcher (to five people specialising in replacements research)

Nomination forms are available to download from the Lush Prize website and must be submitted by the closing date of July 15^th 2013.

Last year, £250,000 was distributed to 13 groups across eight countries who were all deemed by the panel of expert judges to be making 'outstanding contributions' to the global movement to replace animal testing with scientifically valid non-animal methods. The £50,000 science prize was awarded to a multi-national research team from the European Commission's in-house science service for its work on toxicity pathways in heptatoxicology and developmental toxicology. Groups and individuals from across the world were nominated across all categories in last year's awards.

Katy Brown from the Lush Prize said:

“The Lush prize aims to encourage the scientific, regulatory and campaigning communities across the world to focus their attention on animal-free toxicology testing. These awards are truly international, and we were impressed with the nominations from across the globe last year. The winners were inspiring and ground-breaking across all categories. We hope that this year's awards will build on that momentum and continue to reward those scientists, groups and campaigners who are all working towards a future where all product safety testing takes place without the use of animals.”

Every year, it is estimated that more than 100 million animals – including mice, rabbits and rats – are used in testing laboratories around the world.

Like last year, the awards will be judged by an independent panel of judges from the scientific, academic and campaigning communities. Prizes will be awarded at the award ceremony in London, due to be held in November 2013. Visit link for more information.