Improvement of primate facilities is potentially costly, and is constrained by health and safety considerations and by limited experience in smaller units. During the last decade, most units have progressed from two-tier, single housing on grid floors, but there are still opportunities for...

Mongolian gerbils, Meriones unguiculatus, are widely used as model species in parasitology, and in research on epilepsy and ischaemia. When kept under standard laboratory housing conditions, gerbils develop two distinctive behavioural abnormalities: stereotypic digging and bar chewing. Our work...

Environmental enrichment strategies are usually regarded as refinement. However, when the welfare of animals is enhanced through successful enrichment programmes, a reduction in the number of animals needed can be expected, because fewer animals might be lost during the course of experiments....

The proceedings includes articles on animal welfare, animal testing alternatives, carcinogenicity testing, metabolism-mediated effects, genomics, proteonomics and gene regulation, embryonic stem cells, use of reconstituted tissues and co-cultures, barrier systems in vitro, biocompatibility of...

The housing guidelines for laboratory animals laid down in Appendix A of the European Convention for the protection of laboratory animals ETS 123 have been taken over in an Annex of Council Directive 86/609/EEC. Article 5 of the Convention and Articles 5a and 5b in the Directive state that housing...

As animal experiments and testing are still a necessary part of the discovery and development of new drugs and do not seem likely to be totally replaced in the foreseeable future, it is important that the care and use of these animals are continuously refined. Since the housing facilities are where ...

Reductions and refinements in the use of animals have steadily occurred over the last century. The need for improved health status has been a catalyst for much of this effort. This has also driven improvements in the housing and husbandry techniques required to maintain the health status of animals ...

In rats, like many rodents, Harderian glands next to the orbits secrete porphyrins, lipids and other compounds. High levels of secretion lead to chromodacryorrhoea (red or "bloody" tears), often taken as a sign of stress or disease. Here, we developed a scoring system for recording...

The provision of a socialisation and training programme for dogs can lead to an improvement in the quality of the data that are produced from scientific procedures, and also to an improvement in animal welfare. A reduction in the number of animals needed to produce statistically significant data...