Reduction Alternatives

Animal supply strategies: tissue sharing, breeding and cryopreservation

A number of animal supply strategies can contribute to reduction in the absolute numbers of animals used for scientific purposes.

Tissue sharing and banking

Institutions and/or laboratories can coordinate their use of animals by alerting investigators about animal availability and when animals are going to be killed for tissues. For example, if one investigator intends to carry out a study on perfused livers, other investigators may be able to make use of the kidneys, brain tissue, serum or other components of the same animals. In addition, efforts made to bank and use tissues and blood from humanely killed animals will avoid the unnecessary killing of other animals.

Breeding to match supply and demand

Another way to reduce animal numbers is to ensure that the supply of animals does not exceed research requirements, thereby avoiding the generation of surplus animals. Sources of surplus animals can include differing needs for males and females, variable management practices and variable investigator requirements. Minimizing surpluses requires good communication and coordination between breeders, suppliers and investigators. Small, in-house animal breeding colonies almost always involve the production of animals superfluous to the needs of the project and the maintenance of excess breeders in order to cope with fluctuating demands.  Therefore, these breeding colonies should only be established when absolutely necessary, and should be efficiently managed, consistent with anticipated need and the principle of Reduction. Where surpluses do occur, it is important to review the causes and take appropriate action to try and prevent the situation from recurring. In most cases, it is preferable to source animals from reputable animal breeders/suppliers.

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Cryopreservation

Cryopreservation is the process of freezing cells or tissue at very low temperatures that ensure the viability of the material is maintained. It can be used to archive genetic material from animal lines that are currently not needed, and therefore avoid unnecessary maintenance of live breeding colonies and the associated surplus animals. It may be particularly useful for maintaining strains of genetically-engineered animals.

For more information on Reduction alternatives and animal supply strategies, the following resources may be useful:

CCAC resources

• Canadian Council on Animal Care (CCAC) (2008) Animal supply.
• Canadian Council on Animal Care (CCAC) (2008) CCAC guidelines on: procurement of animals used in science. 27pp Ottawa ON:CACC.

Online resources

• NCI-Frederick Center for Cancer Research (2008) Animal Numbers for Research Use.

  - An online tool to assist in calculating number of animals that are necessary to support breeding studies.

• The Jackson Laboratory (2008) Cryopreservation and recovery services.
• Robinson V., Morton D.B., Anderson D., Carver J.F.A., Francis R.J., Hubrecht R., Jenkins E., Mathers K.E., Raymond R., Rosewell I., Wallace J., & Wells D.J. (2003) Refinement and reduction in production of genetically modified mice. Sixth report of the BVAAWF/FRAME/RSPCA/UFAW Joint Working Group on Refinement. Laboratory Animals 37 (Suppl1):S1-S50.

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