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Beyond Animal Testing Index: Benchmarking tool for a world beyond animal testing.

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journal contribution
posted on 2024-01-10, 10:33 authored by Cyrille Krul, Annick De Moor, Koen Stegmeijer, Reinout Stoop, Judith Van Luijk, Jan-Bas Prins
While the original definition of replacement focuses on the replacement of the use of animals in science, a more contemporary definition focuses on accelerating the development and use of predictive and robust models, based on the latest science and technologies, to address scientific questions without the use of animals. The transition to animal free innovation is on the political agenda in and outside the European Union. The Beyond Animal Testing Index (BATI) is a benchmarking instrument designed to provide insight into the activities and contribution of research institutes in the transition to animal free innovation. The BATI allows participating organizations to learn from each other and stimulates continuous improvement. The BATI was modelled after the Access to Medicine Index, which benchmarks pharmaceutical companies on their efforts to make medicines widely available in developing countries. A prototype of the BATI was field tested with three Dutch academic medical centers and two universities in 2020-2021. The field test demonstrated the usability and effectiveness of the BATI as a benchmarking tool. Analyses were performed across five different domains. The participating institutes concluded that the BATI served as an internal, as well as an external stimulus to share, learn and improve institutional strategies towards the transition to animal free innovation. The BATI also identified gaps in the development and implementation of 3R technologies. Hence, the BATI might be a suitable instrument for monitoring the effectiveness of policies. BATI version 1.0 is ready to be used for benchmarking at a larger scale.

Funding

Crick (Grant ID: CC1109, Grant title: STP BRF)

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