WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 (UPI) -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has agreed on a new strategy to test the safety of potentially toxic chemicals without using animals.

The EPA and the National Institutes of Health announced a toxicity testing agreement that will allow the EPA to use NIH Chemical Genomics Center's high-speed, automated screening robots to test suspected toxic compounds, using cells and isolated molecular targets instead of laboratory animals, the EPA said Thursday in a release.

The new program is expected to generate data that is more relevant to humans, expand the number of chemicals that are tested and reduce the number of animals involved in testing, the agency said.

The collaborative research program was outlined in the journal Science.