The fate of surplus laboratory animals

The broad public acceptance of the use of animals in research is largely due to the fact that it has delivered medical innovations that have enormously improved human quality of life and life expectancy. But, this has come with a price of millions of ‘surplus’ animals that are not being used in experiments and therefore have to be killed. For the sake of improving animal welfare and for meeting the goals of the EU regulation on the use of animals in research, science needs to find ways to reduce the number of ‘surplus’ animals.

The article was published in the journal "EMBO Reports".

The fate of surplus laboratory animals
Minimizing the production of surplus animals has greatest potential to reduce the number of laboratory animals
Hartmut Wewetzer, Tobias Wagenknecht, Bettina Bert, Gilbert Schönfelder
EMBO Reports (2023)e56551
https://doi.org/10.15252/embr.202256551