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IDA’s Reallocation Initiative proposes that all institutions which sustain and promote scientific research implement a dedicated plan for reallocating at least five percent of their annual funding and resources away from projects involving animals and apply them to non-animal methods.
There are a number of ways that research institutions can reallocate resources towards non-animal research. These will vary according to the needs of the institution, but we offer the following as a guideline for ways the Reallocation Initiative can be successfully executed.
- Research institutions should critically evaluate current animal protocols and eliminate those which can be replaced by non-animal methods. Oversight committees can designate five percent of protocols which should be redirected each year to non-animal methods. The Animal Welfare Information Center, a division of the USDA, is available to provide assistance in locating research methods to replace the use of animals.
- Colleges and universities should encourage faculty to develop expertise in non-animal methods by allowing them to attend training conferences and courses, and bringing in outside experts.
- Faculty currently conducting experiments on animals should be encouraged to pair up their research protocols with those that are clinically-based. Many universities conduct both types of research, often on the same or similar topics. These protocols can be combined to examine the problem in question with the goal of augmenting the clinical aspect while reducing the animal portion of the research.
- Institutions that do not have the ability to partner animal experiments with clinical protocols should seek and establish partnerships with other institutions that are conducting clinical studies that correspond to the current animal studies. Collaborative research relationships already exist for many experimental protocols and can be utilized to reallocate animal usage.
- When faculty resign or retire, or as new positions open up, colleges and universities can choose to hire scientists who are not conducting research on animals.
- Live animal labs can be omitted from graduate or undergraduate courses and replaced with non-animal teaching methods. This is being done extensively in medical school education and has a proven record of success.
- Institutions should incorporate courses on research ethics that seriously explore the issues surrounding the use of animals for experimentation. These should be required for all undergraduate and graduate students in medicine, biology and related fields to raise awareness of the problems inherent to animal research.
- Animals should be identified who have specific circumstances that make them especially deserving or in need of retirement from laboratory life. Examples include: animals who have successfully survived difficult protocols; animals who are no longer needed because the protocol has ended; animals who are frail or elderly but not severely ill; and, animals who, for whatever reason, appear to have difficulty coping with laboratory life.
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