The Voluntary Children's Chemical Evaluation Program (VCCEP) is an Environmental Protection Agency testing program that has caused concern among those seeking alternatives to animal testing. The goal of the VCCEP is to generate toxicity profiles for those chemicals to which children are frequently exposed. As with the High Production Volume (HPV) and Endocrine Disruptor (ED) programs, the VCCEP's proposed testing battery relies heavily on the use of animals.
Details of the initiative are still pending. The EPA initially wanted to make the chemical testing mandatory. The agency decided in 1999 to abandon that approach and seek an agreement with industry for voluntary testing. The EPA then held a series of "stakeholder" meetings to solicit advice from the chemical industry, children's health advocates, animal protectionists, and others regarding which chemicals should be tested, what tests should be used, and how the program should be structured. Prior work by the agency and its advisory committees had already led to the proposed test battery. The EPA has issued a draft list of approximately 20 chemicals for the first round of testing.
The VCCEP is related to the HPV program in two ways. First, the chemicals to be tested will be drawn primarily from the 2,800 HPV chemicals. Second, both programs are part of former Vice President Al Gore's Chemical Right to Know Initiative. The animal protection community hopes that it can convince the EPA to make the same sorts of positive changes in the VCCEP as it did for the HPV program, and that these changes, once accepted, will be vigorously implemented.
