The Animal Caretaker Team from the Department of Biomedicine, University of Basel has exhibited an exemplary approach to sustainably reduce surplus animals.

Reducing the number of animals that are bred but have no further use should be self-evident from an ethical point of view. However, a reduction to the indispensable minimum is still a major challenge for many scientific institutions. The reasons and potential approaches are complex and include among others the necessity to breed specific genotypes, the training of those responsible for breeding, the need of central management of breeding to ensure optimised breeding schemes, the exchange of animals between research groups and cryopreservation of lines instead of maintenance breeding. 

Through personal commitment, perseverance and expertise of the nominated animal caretaker team, surplus animals could be significantly reduced in the animal facility in question and a sustainable concept for needs-based breeding could be implemented. In addition, in the course of an organised seminar series, animal-based experiments were explained to the animal care staff in order to improve the animal care personnel’s understanding of the use of the bred animals. In this way, workplace satisfaction could be increased and at the same time the psychological stress caused by killing of surplus animals could be reduced. The reduction of animals killed, addresses both animal welfare concerns and a reduction of psychological stress and therefore prevents also compassion fatigue of animal care personnel in lab animal husbandry.