Refinement Grants

Refinement Grants were part of our 2021-2024 Funding Scheme - now complete

The term Refinement in the context of the 3Rs principle refers to methods, which alleviate or minimise potential pain, suffering and distress, and which enhance animal well-being.

The Swiss 3RCC believes that Refinement applies to all aspects of animal care and use, including: housing conditions, handling methods, anaesthesia and analgesia, habituation to procedures, execution of procedures, monitoring of health and well-being, humane endpoints, and euthanasia. The term may also refer to the development of better (i.e. more accurate, reliable, sensitive) tools to assess an animal’s suffering and well-being.

To encourage the implementation of established refinement techniques and approaches, the Swiss 3RCC is offering project grants of up to CHF 20’000.- in the 3Rs area of refinement. We are looking for proposals which also emphasise training and dissemination of methods. As such we would emphasise the use or further development of established refinement approaches (as opposed to research developing novel techniques).

This may be used to train existing staff in a particular group in the implementation of a new approach; assist in purchasing and training for new equipment; further optimise / validate an existing approach and teach and communicate the results; organise open Swiss-wide workshops to promote the use of one or more refinement approaches; or organise other efforts to encourage widespread use of an existing technique.

Complete an application and let the Swiss 3RCC know how you could benefit from additional finances and the full support of the 3RCC to further Refinement approaches in Switzerland. Any individual or group from a swiss-based institute of higher education is eligible to apply.

Applications are completed online on our grant portal platform.
You can find an example form of the application here (note there may be some minor differences to the online form)

Applications Open: 14th of August, 2023 – 15th of October, 2023
Decision: 20th of January, 2024
Expected budget range: from 1,000 up to CHF 20,000.- per project (but no strict upper limit applies if justified)