The Australia Group (AG) is a forum of like-minded states seeking to harmonize export controls to prevent the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons. The AG Chemical Weapons Precursors (CWP) list features dual-use chemicals that can be used as precursors for the synthesis of chemical weapons, all individually enumerated. This is in contrast with the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) Schedules, which also include entries that describe families of chemicals. By using families of chemicals, the CWC can cover with a single entry a wide array of related chemicals of concern, including chemicals that have not yet been made.

There are practical reasons why the AG CWP list is exclusively based on individual chemical enumeration. A cheminformatics tool in development by the Stimson Center, the Nonproliferation Compliance Cheminformatics Tool (NCCT), has the potential to enable export control officers to handle control lists that contain families of chemicals, opening the way to expand the AG CWP list to a family-based approach for some of its entries. Such a change would result in a closer alignment of the chemical space respectively covered by the AG CWP list and by the CWC Schedules, thus closing loopholes that could be exploited by proliferators.

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