Animal Welfare

Mouse facility matches highest health standards and ethics.

Animal Welfare is our middle name. Our mice are enormously valuable, and we use every means to improve their holding conditions and breeding environment:

  • Impeccable health (see below)
  • Best-trained personnel attending daily project meetings
  • Optimal enrichment, including thick bedding, 2 types of nesting material (nestlets and aspen fibers), gnawing sticks and gnawable housing in each cage
  • Exchange with and membership in the Basel Declaration Society
Hygiene
Only sterile products enter the facility, including irradiated food and water, and autoclaved materials, and full hygiene and clothing change for the personnel. All animals are held in Tecniplast Individually Ventilated Cages (IVC’s).
Hygiene status and Health Monitoring

Why is our SOPF status better than anybody else’s (seriously)?

Because we test strictly according to FELASA. Not a selection of endoparasites, but ALL of them, not Pasteurella xy, but all Pasteurellaceae etc.; No irrelevant PCR testing when IFA or ELISA is mandatory, or cultivation;
The animals going into the test are mice mated on a rotational basis for two full months (full contact sentinels);
and we are tested externally (of course!), the external lab testing us is MicroBioS, the world-wide ONLY FELASA-accredited microbiology testing lab.

Why is our status so good?

Simple answer: the personnel. Perhaps also: not anybody ever except the dedicated personnel has access, and the PolyGene facility is remote and unconnected to anybody else. There’s not even an aquarium in the building.

Quarantine
There is NO QUARANTINE at PolyGene. Simply: Only embryo transfer is accepted for the introduction of animals. The only obvious exception: The initial establishment of the foster/vas colony years ago.
The 3 R's
The principles of the 3Rs (Replacement, Reduction and Refinement) were developed over 50 years ago as a framework for humane animal research. They have subsequently become embedded in national and international legislation regulating the use of animals in scientific procedures. For PolyGene, they are at the heart of our activities.

Replacement

To limit animal suffering, the foremost act is to replace animal experiments by methods that do not involve animals – such as: Investigations in human volunteers, tissues and cells; Use or establishment of animal cell lines; Use of species less ethically challenging, and likely to experience less suffering, such as Drosophila or nematodes; Mathematical and computer models.
Only when an application fails with the mentioned tools, and when a ethical body agrees on the need of the research, is experimental work with mammals justified.

Reduction

This principle aims at minimizing the number of animals needed in experimentation. From the point of view of customer models, our part consists of the generation of uniform models on inbred background to allow for reduction in cohorts. For us, constant improvement of methods (e.g., optimization of hormone treatments and age selection) allows us to continuously increase efficiencies and lower the number of donor animals.

Refinement

Refinement refers to everything that minimizes pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm in animals. It applies to all aspects of animal use, from the housing and husbandry used to the scientific procedures performed on them. Switzerland has one of the strictest regulations for animal treatment, and we are proud to be at the front of the implementers, often preceding the recommendations by years.

Current Colony Report

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