Severe Suffering  

• How can we end severe suffering by working together?
• How can I myself improve my project?
• How can I integrate 3R strategies into severe suffering projects?
• How can severity assessment work as applied refinement from the animal's perspective?
• What are the dos and don'ts of retrospective assessment?

To the event

Ensuring the "welfare of animals" as a "value of the Union" is the primary objective of the European Directive 2010/63/EU, which was implemented in Austria by the Animal Experiments Act 2012 (TVG 2012).

This regulates that "death as an endpoint of a procedure is to be avoided as far as possible" as well as "to be replaced by early and as painless endpoints as possible".

Is the use of animals in a project absolutely necessary? Are there suitable, animal-free methods to achieve my project goal? How is the the highest possible level of animal welfare and a low level of severity classification guaranteed? These are all questions that researchers need to address in the planning a project.

Score sheets can be used in order to assess the health status of the animals as objectively and transparently as possible. They are protocols that are used to record the clinical status and well-being of laboratory animals.

In einigen Bereichen ist der Einsatz von Tieren zur Forschung an diversen Fragestellungen immer noch unersetzlich. Solange dies der Fall ist muss aber in jedem Fall dafür gesorgt werden, dass „Schmerzen, Leiden, Ängste oder dauerhafte Schäden ausgeschaltet oder auf ein Minimum reduziert werden“.