For a full report of the day's events, as well as copies of the presentations and photos, please refer to the bottom of this page.

Prof. Hendriksen gave an overview of the current situation in animal testing, including the purposes for which animals are used, the nature of regulatory testing, what alternative testing is and why it is needed, the results of his personal experience of developing alternatives and where the barriers to progress in this area lie.

The concept of the 3R’s (Replacement, Refinement and Reduction) in animal testing is codified in the EU by Council Directive 86/609/EEC and supported by the scientific and regulatory community, however, though there has been a significant downward trend in the use of animals over the last decades, advancements in this area has been relatively limited. In certain areas, progress has been particularly frustrating. A major problem is the time taken to develop and validate alternatives.

Major obstacles are a lack of common scientific tools, funding issues, a relatively low priority assigned to this activity and negative cost-benefit analysis. Greater support is needed to make sure 3Rs development is given higher priority. Directive 86/609 should be fully implemented and greater harmonisation is needed to reduce duplicate testing. There is a need to support more intelligent, more flexible and less bureaucratic testing strategies. Finally it is important to consider all three R’s equally, as replacement is not necessarily possible or advisable in some cases. Prof Hendriksen concluded by stating that “Less animals makes more science. And more science makes better regulations.”

Hendriksen is animal welfare officer at the Netherlands Vaccine Institute (NVI) in Bilthoven. In addition, he holds a (part-time) chair on Alternatives to Animal Use at Utrecht University and he is head of the Netherlands Centre for Alternatives to Animal Use (NCA). His research activities are focused on the development and validation of methods to replace, reduce and/or refine the use of laboratory animals, especially in the field of the production and quality control of immunobiologicals. He is co-editor of several books and congress proceedings. He has been the Dutch representative of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the European Centre for Validation of Alternative Methods (ECVAM) from 1992 until 2002..